Why is ssn important

These background screenings perform two essential functions for employers:. Social Security numbers are an invaluable tool for screeners to use when performing background checks. Your Social Security number will not tell your full life story, but it does provide a critical framework that screeners and employers can use to ask deeper questions.

First and foremost, your social security number is used to verify your identity. Your social security number is attached to one name and one birthday.

Second, since social security numbers are used to track many types of personal transactions, a background check searches a variety of sources mailing houses, public records, credit bureaus to pull up information on an individual. SSN searches will also reveal your work history and credit information such as foreclosures and bankruptcies.

Most significantly, and perhaps surprisingly, criminal records are not tied to SSNs. Employers primarily run background checks as a baseline for establishing trust with a new employee.

The arguments in favor of the metal card were its permanence, accuracy records could be imprinted from the embossed token , and economy because of the imprinting capability. Still, in early June , the Board decided to use a small paper card McKinley and Frase , and In late , a second version was adopted, and a version just for replacement cards was adopted in SSA , 1.

Since , the design of original and replacement Social Security cards has been the same. In all, over 50 designs have been used from to All versions remain valid since it would be cost-prohibitive to replace all cards previously issued. Over time, as the use of the SSN expanded for other purposes, SSA recognized that changes were necessary to protect the integrity of the card.

SSA has taken measures to prevent counterfeiting of the card, and a counterfeit-resistant version is now used for both original and replacement cards. Steps taken by SSA to improve the card are detailed later. There was also considerable discussion in about the types of information to collect as part of the registration. Generally, SSA collected the information needed to uniquely identify and accurately report an individual's earnings covered under the new Social Security program.

Race was considered a necessary piece of information for actuarial purposes because of differences in life expectancy among different races. The original version of the SS -5 requested the following information:.

Initial estimates were that 22 million SSN s would be issued immediately, with 50 million ultimately to be issued McKinley and Frase , In fact, 35 million SSN s were issued in the first 8 months of the registration effort. The Social Security Board estimated it would also need to assign identifying numbers to 3. Assigning responsibility for the vast registration process was a real problem.

Debate shifted back and forth over whether the Board's Bureau of Old-Age Benefits could handle the work. The Census Bureau also declined, citing legal restrictions on the disclosure of its information to other agencies and confidentiality promises to the public that census information would be used for statistical purposes only McKinley and Frase , — In June , the Social Security Board decided that its Bureau of Old-Age Benefits would handle the registration and that the registration process would begin after the November 3, , presidential election McKinley and Frase , In May, the executive committee of the interdepartmental committee on enumeration had recommended that the Bureau could handle the registration by setting up field offices and hiring 12, to 16, employees.

The Board estimated that these field offices would cover approximately 67 percent of registrants. On July 17, , the Social Security Board's regional directors were told that Bureau field offices would be open by November, that SSN assignment would begin about November 15, and that registration would be completed within 60 days. Also in July, the Board talked to the Post Office Department about assigning post office personnel to assist in cities where the Board would not yet have field offices to handle the registration McKinley and Frase , — However, difficulties in recruiting personnel and setting up offices would make it impossible for the Bureau to handle the workload.

The Post Office Department had 45, facilities and over , employees at that time Wyatt and Wandel , However, delays in getting registration started made these deadlines moot. The Social Security Board's Informational Service, established in January , prepared a publicity campaign at midyear to encourage employers and workers to complete the application forms, but did not plan to distribute the material until after the November 3 election.

However, the Board accelerated the publicity release in response to a September effort to discredit the program launched by Alf N. Landon, the Republican candidate for president.

Also that year, many employers, in conjunction with Landon and the Republican Party, began stuffing payroll envelopes with leaflets against the Social Security Act and the required deductions from employee wages. Winant, resigned in order to campaign in defense of the Social Security Act. On November 6, the campaign to encourage employers and employees to register began. The campaign included three releases on old-age benefits in 24 languages distributed to the country's foreign language press.

The Associated Press, the United Press, the Hearst chain, and many individual papers ran a series of articles on old-age benefits and registration for weeks at a time.

During the November and December initial registration period, there were also 12 nationwide radio broadcasts by well-known individuals and a host of local broadcasts arranged by the 56 skeletal field offices then in place.

Over 3 million posters 7 were distributed, 50 million more pamphlets were dispersed, and three additional newsreel trailers were shown to some 42 million people McKinley and Frase , — The registration process was largely directed by the local postmasters.

The first task for the postmen was to make up lists of employers on their routes. Their effort resulted in a list of 2. Beginning November 16, , the post offices sent Form SS -4 s to employers based on the lists they had compiled earlier that month. Along with information about the business establishment, employers were asked for the number of workers they employed. The mail carriers collected the completed SS -4 s a week or two later.

Based on SS -4 information, the post offices delivered Form SS -5 s to the employers the following week for distribution to employees McKinley and Frase , Employees were permitted to return the completed SS -5 application either to the employer, to any labor organization of which the employee was a member, to the letter carrier, to the post office by hand, or to the post office via mail Wyatt and Wandel , This last possibility caused another round of negotiations between the Social Security Board and the Post Office Department about whether "return penalty privilege" requiring no postage applied.

Postal regulations stated that this privilege could only be used if an individual was not required by law to submit the information. The Board argued that no postage was required as there was no law requiring employees to obtain an SSN.

At the same time, however, the Board was requesting the Treasury Department to issue regulations mandating employees to obtain account numbers.

Even at this early time, the public was concerned about privacy and confidentiality issues. Many employees were anxious to know how the information on the SS -5 would be used. The Social Security Board issued releases at various times assuring the public that the information on the application would be kept confidential, with access limited to government employees for whom job duties under the Social Security Act required it Wyatt and Wandel , In June , the Social Security Board would issue its very first regulation, formalizing its pledge of confidentiality for information collected and maintained.

The work of the Social Security Board to reassure the public was complicated by the actions of some employers, who circulated additional forms along with the SS These extra forms requested information such as nationality, religion, education, and union affiliation. On February 26, , the Board issued a press release warning employers against distributing unauthorized questionnaires that appeared to be required by the Social Security Board Wyatt and Wandel , Of the 45, post offices then in existence, 1, first-class offices were designated as "typing centers" to assign the SSN s, along with 57 "central accounting" post offices to assign SSN s for the second, third, and fourth class post offices within their area McKinley and Frase , For each registrant, postal employees typed the information from the SS -5 onto the prenumbered OA in duplicate.

Each OA had a detachable portion on which the employee's name was typed and then returned to the employee—the Social Security card.

The post office mailed the completed Social Security cards to the employer, unless the employee had taken the SS -5 to the post office in person and waited for the typed card.

The post offices and later the Bureau's field offices kept carbon copies of the OA to use should an individual request a replacement card Wyatt and Wandel , The publicity campaign and the Post Office Department's efforts resulted in over 22 million completed applications as of December 22, , 28 days after the initial distribution of employee applications Wyatt and Wandel , During the first 4 months of the registration campaign, nearly 26 million SSN s and more than 2.

In September , when the Post Office Department signed the agreement to handle the initial registration, the Board had planned for the Bureau of Old-Age Benefits to have field offices set up to take over the enumeration workload in January However, hiring field staff had to await the results of the "examination for administrative officer" civil service test given in August The resulting register was not made available to the Board until December McKinley and Frase , So in November the Board instead assigned headquarters staff to 56 Bureau field offices, covering all but one of the cities where the Post Office Department had set up its "central accounting" offices.

These 56 Bureau offices primarily answered questions and directed applicants to the post offices McKinley and Frase , 34—35 and Effective July , Bureau field offices, still numbering only with 1, total employees, took over the enumeration workload from the post offices Zwintscher , 90; SSA , And still the job was not finished. In July alone, Bureau field offices issued some 1. Even with field office employees working evenings and Saturdays and with "managers and assistant managers, anyone who was available, pounding away at typewriters," the Bureau had to set up additional typing centers in its 12 regional offices to help with the workload SSA , 10; SSA , 32; SSA Not all U.

This was because the original Social Security Act had excluded some types of employment from coverage, such as agricultural workers, domestic servants, casual labor, maritime workers, government employees, and the employees of philanthropic, educational, and similar institutions.

The self-employed were also excluded from coverage. Seventy years ago, these exempt workers comprised about 40 percent of the working population. Initially, only employees working in covered employment and aged 64 or younger were eligible to obtain an SSN.

However, almost from the start, state unemployment compensation agencies began using SSN s to identify workers, and some employers tended to prefer hiring individuals who already possessed an SSN Social Security Board , So, after a few months the Bureau began issuing SSN s to anyone who applied. For over 20 years, Bureau field offices assigned SSN s, using blocks of prenumbered Social Security cards furnished to each office.

Office staff simply typed the number holder's name on one of the prenumbered cards. For replacement cards, field office staff manually typed the SSN and name on a blank card.

In , issuance of original SSN s was centralized in Baltimore, but local offices continued to issue replacement cards. Space to handle the SS -5 application forms was found on three floors of the Candler Building, a large warehouse converted from a Coca-Cola bottling factory on the harbor in downtown Baltimore SSA Here the Bureau installed a "great battery" of International Business Machines IBM equipment 9 and deployed over 2, machine workers and checkers by December 9, , to handle the applications as quickly as they came in McKinley and Frase , 33 and At this time, a hiring "apportionment" was in effect, which meant the Bureau could only recruit a certain proportion of employees from each state.

As a result, employees came from all parts of the country. It was thought that the central operation in the Candler building was temporary, and that the work would soon be dispersed to the 12 regions, so recruitment from distant states was logical SSA However, actual operations would reveal that decentralization was not really feasible.

The Baltimore Records Office used a nine-step process to create a permanent master record and to establish an earnings record for each individual.

The appropriate control card was removed at the end of a step and sent to a control file to track the status of each block McKinley and Frase , When the Records Office received the Form SS -5 and the accompanying OA from the local offices, different clerks working independently converted the two sets of information into numerical codes that could be transferred to punch cards.

The first group of employees keyed information from the SS -5 into a master punch card for each individual. A tabulating machine used this master punch card to set up a numerical register of accounts stored in huge loose-leaf books. These volumes contained the SSN , name, and date of birth of each number holder. Each page contained SSN s in numerical order. From these volumes, employees could learn the name and identifying information of an SSN 's owner in a fraction of the time that would be required to locate the master punch card Wyatt and Wandel , — The master punch card was also used in the earnings-posting operation to establish an earnings ledger for each individual.

A second group of employees independently keyed the same information coded from the OA to create an actuarial punch card Fay and Wasserman , The actuarial punch card was created for actuarial and statistical purposes and was also used to set up the "visible index. The strips were inserted into the frame one by one, with some employees filing as many as strips an hour. Each strip began with a 3-digit entry based on the Russell Soundex System in which all surnames having the same basic consonants are grouped together , followed by the individual's surname, given name, middle initial, and SSN.

The strips were mechanically prepared from the actuarial punch card and manually posted on the panel, sorted by the first letter of the surname and within each letter by phonetic code, then in each code group by the first seven letters of the first name, middle initial, year and month of birth, and SSN. Up to 1, panels were then hung on each rack Staruch , The primary function of the visible index was to aid in the location of accounts when only the name of the owner and not the SSN was known Wyatt and Wandel , For instance, employees referred to the index when a worker who had lost his or her card and did not know the SSN applied for a duplicate SSA and Staruch , Reportedly, experienced clerks were able to find any name and its corresponding account number in less than 60 seconds Fay and Wasserman , In addition, the SS -5 s were filmed on 16 millimeter, noninflammable film strips.

In June , officials bragged "This film is so compact that the entire file of 40 million photographed SS -5 s is stored in 10 ordinary letter-size file cabinets" Fay and Wasserman , A California law bars organizations from publicly displaying SSNs 2.

The law prohibits:. Victims of identity theft sometimes want to change their Social Security number. The Social Security Administration very rarely allows this. In fact, there are drawbacks to changing your number. It could result in losing your credit history, your academic records, and your professional degrees.

The absence of any credit history under the new SSN would make it difficult for you to get credit, rent an apartment, or open a bank account. You can get a copy by calling , or online at www. Code a. YouTube Instagram Adobe.

Kickstarter Tumblr Art Club. Film TV Games. Fortnite Game of Thrones Books. Comics Music. Filed under: Web Policy Report. Linkedin Reddit Pocket Flipboard Email. Source: RSA Social Security numbers are the most common starting point for identity thieves, said Angel Grant, a senior manager at the information security firm RSA, which monitors the black markets where identity thieves traffic. Source: RSA Similarly, the Government Accountability Office issued a report in that acknowledged that the private sector entities "routinely" obtain and use SSNs, but does not say how the practice started.

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