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Wooooooooooah... subfiles? Hidden stuff on our credit reports? This does provide some interesting ways to check up on things, though. Like matching your W2 to your Annual Sociel Security report.

The penalties for this kind of behavior need to be very severe. Any evidence that someone is using another persons SSN needs to be throughly investigated. Not only is this eroding confidence in our financial and banking systems, evidence of SSN fraud is indicative of other crimes being committed as well. This is like forging your signature. There should be no tolerance of this.

Like the woman in the article, you might suspect but you have no way to verify or fix. We need less government - no SS numbers ! (no SS/Medicare woud be fine too)

ping

If the thief is working at a job which reports income to the IRS (and most any job that required a SS# would), the IRS will do the match-up for you. My Dad found this out the hard way. He's a retired Foreign Service Officer in his 80s, living in the Washington DC area, and a couple of years ago the IRS demanded that he pay a bunch more in taxes "on income you failed to report on your tax return". Turned out this income was that of an illegal immigrant busboy who'd been working at a Brooklyn, NY restaurant for a few months, using my Dad's SS#. It took months to sort out; my Dad has a lot of time on his hands and the skills to deal with government bureaucracy, but if this happened to someone who was juggling a job and family, or to the mentally incapacitated parent of same, sorting it out could be a very costly nightmare.

Bttt

I had a long conversation with an IT guy who oversaw the Navy switching from Navy Serial Numbers to Social Security Numbers. It was almost a disaster.

Part of the problem was that some congresscritter decided it would be a good thing, so he stuck it into a Defense Appropriation bill, and gave the Navy 6 months to comply --- 6 months to change every piece of software in the Navy, because they all keyed their records to the Navy Serial number.

Another part of the problem was the discovery that the Social Security Administration had not been exactly scrupulous about giving a number to a single individual. For example, it seems that some little old lady in Chicago issued the same Social Security number to a dozen "john smith"s over a 30 year period, because, after all, they all had the same name, so they should have the same number; and she wasn't the only one, and that was not the only name it occurred to. What do you expect from the drones that work at the Social Security Department?

During the switchover, the Navy had to get new social security numbers for an incredibly large number of its sailors.

They finally got it down to one name with two sailors - one which had gone AWOL in Vietnam, and the other who had retired after honorable service. The first time the honorable sailor went to a PX to buy some groceries, and presented his ID, and the clerk entered it into the automated system ... all the MPs in the world arrived and surrounded him and his wife with guns drawn, arresting him for going AWOL while in a combat zone. It took several months to sort that out. This happened more than once. So he finally got a letter signed by the Secretary of the Navy that said ... this is not the AWOL John Smith, and if you have any questions, call this phone number.

... a predictable problem with digital IDs. Coming to you in the near future ...

"Hidden stuff on our credit reports?"

This woman got screwed. I would go down to the FBI and have an agent research me electronically for anything wrong. They already have a complete background check on me and even know what color toilet paper I use. So that shouldn't take much time.

There are things you can do to prevent that.

1. Only use the ATM at your bank and use cash as much as possible. And don't leave your reciept there.

2. Don't use gas stations that require you to punch in your PIN like ARCO.

3. Your SSN is only given to somebody in person when needed and not over any electronic device at all.

4. Shred personal documents and clean off dinner plates on top of that.

5. Dress like Joe Blow if you are worth a lot, when you can. (I've spotted Hollywood actors dressing like slobs so they can do normal things like go to a mall without a hassle. And CEOs in Levis and sneakers)

It’s also impossible to say how common such theft is; the only agencies that would know –- the credit bureaus and the Social Security Administration -- aren’t talking. But an investigation by MSNBC.com last year revealed that millions of workers pay taxes using the wrong Social Security number every year, hinting that the problem may be much wider than generally believed.

This is the reason the problem persists. The government is taking in millions, maybe billions, from the false use of SSN#s. That is money that never needs paying back as the fake users never file for SS. The owner of the true number gets credit for all the taxes paid, unless the mismatched name excludes that and then the government just spends it, so if that is all that is stolen the real owner doesn't lose.

Bottom line, the government doesn't want to fix it.

The IRS should pick this up when the imposter's employers sends in a W-2. I have a friend who had this happen multiple years before they actually did anything about it, though.

Unemployment agencies would be among the few that would detect SSN-only fraud, as they are charged with preventing someone from collecting unemployment checks while working. They do that by seeing if wages are reported and taxes collected under an SSN.

Pure BS. They are the only ones who lose money. The IRS & SSN know it is happening and they don't care. They pocket the money.