You could become a victim of the fastest growing crime in America.
How?
While waiting in line to buy a parking permit, Roy Segovia, agraduate student, was asked to put his name and full Social Securitynumber on a list that was being passed from student to student.
“There was this sheet with something like 40 names and SocialSecurity numbers on it,” Segovia said. “It wouldn’t take much forsomeone to look at this sheet and memorize a name and a number.”
Segovia works for the Privacy Rights Clearing House and theIdentity Theft Resource Center as a part of the groups’ Latinooutreach. Through his work with these groups, he has become aware ofhow much students are at risk of having their identities stolen.
“There were other situations where I had to give my SocialSecurity number out loud, for example to a cashier,” Segovia said.”Someone could easily overhear me and write my information down.”
Identity theft is a crime where someone uses information thatbelongs to another for some kind of personal gain. This gain can befinancial, when a Social Security number is used to gain credit, orcriminal, when a name and driver’s license number are used to avoid acriminal record.
According to the Federal Trade Commission, more than 700,000people became victims of identity theft in 2000, and the number hasbeen increasing an average of 30 percent to 40 percent each year.
“Anyone who has a Social Security number is at risk,” Linda Foley,director of the Identity Theft Resource Center, said. “Morefrequently than not, the Social Security number is being used as astudent identification number, and that is a problem area.”
In May 2001, a student was arrested on suspicion of identity theftafter she was caught with missing credit cards and forged receipts.The credit cards belonged to other students living in her residencehall.
Last summer, the university removed Social Security numbers fromall student identification cards, replacing them with a new, encoded,16-digit number.
However, the Social Security number is still the students’ primarymeans of identification, punched into computers to get book lists ordialed on a phone to register for classes.
“The university tries very hard to protect the number,” ErnstGriffin, special assistant to the associate vice president forAcademic Affairs, said. “For example, you use a PIN number to accessregistration before you can get to your records.”
Another concern among students is that parts of Social Securitynumbers are often used by professors to take roll.
“In classes, instructors often take roll by passing around a sheetof paper and asking for your name and the last four digits of yourSocial Security number,” Segovia said. “This is very risky becausesomebody could, with a little bit of diligence, do research on theSocial Security Web site and figure out what the first five digitsare.”
Foley said that the university system can help to protect studentprivacy by eliminating the use of Social Security numbers as publicinformation numbers.
“I have spoken with administrators and they tell me the SocialSecurity number is used because they receive government money,” shesaid.
“When you receive government money, you have to have a certainaudit system; but just because you have a certain need forinformation in a computer database, that does not mean that numberhas to be used as the public information number as well.”
The university could use the Social Security number in a databaseand link it with another identification number, she said. If thisprocess was to be used for the incoming freshmen class of 2002, theuse of Social Security numbers as public information numbers would bewiped out in a few years.
Many universities across the country have been addressing the useof Social Security numbers as potentially dangerous for students, andhave eliminated them as student identification. In 1998, the state ofWisconsin passed a law that prohibited universities from using theSocial Security number as the student identification number.
After four security breaches at Indiana University, which togetherexposed the names and social security numbers of about 5,000 studentsand faculty, the school is implementing a new student identificationsystem. The five-year process will cost $2.3 million in state grants.
San Diego State, however, has not yet moved in this direction.
“It has been discussed over various points of time,” Griffin said.”The university has not made that decision yet.”
