Identity Theft Recovery -- Is Changing Your Social Security Number the Answer?
Find out why changing your social security number is not a good idea for identity theft recovery
The easiest way for identity thieves to steal your identity is with your social security number. Once they have this valuable number, they can do all sorts of damage to your finances and your reputation. Considering this, it's only natural for identity theft victims to think that if they change the number causing so much grief; all the problems will go away with it. Not so.
Here's why changing the number is not a simple step to identity theft recovery.
Loss of history
When you change your social security number, you lose all of the history that goes along with it. Granted, you want to lose the problems that have been caused by the theft, but you also lose everything recorded with that number since you were born.
Difficulties in changing numbers
The Social Security Administration only lets people change their social security number when they show proof of hardship. Verbally telling them isn't going to work. They demand heavy, documented proof. This can be difficult to prove and just adds to the headaches of trying to solve your identity theft problems.
You must show abuse of your social security number by a thief, and prove necessary steps have been taken to stop it.
If you solve the problem of proving hardship with the Social Security Administration, the next hurdle is tracking down every bank, utility, credit-card association and government agency containing the old number on file. Obviously, this is time consuming and takes months.
Problem -- Not solved
After completing the tiresome process of getting your number changed, it's upsetting to find that it doesn't solve your identity problems. When you change your number, Social Security doesn't delete your old number; instead it links them together so retirement benefits are not affected. From that point on, potential employers, banks, and landlords see a clean record linked to a bad one and want explanations. More explaining.
As you can see, changing your social security number isn't the answer for identity theft recovery. All that is accomplished is linking your new clean record to a tarnished record and the problems still remain.