When To Give Out Your Social Security Number and How To Protect It

OlenderFeldman was interviewed by U.S. News and World Report about when to give out your social security number and how to protect it, so that you can protect your privacy.

Most people get requests for their social security number on a regular basis, and it is often difficult to understand whether you are required to give that information or when it’s purely optional. In a recent U.S. News and World Report article, Aaron Messing provided some tips about determining when that information is required:

“It’s hard to tell whether a business is going to follow best practices,” says Aaron Messing, an information privacy attorney at OlenderFeldman LLP in New Jersey. “The best way to protect private information including Social Security numbers is to limit who has access to it.”

In addition to asking why your social security number is necessary and how it will be used, Aaron recommends offering an alternate identifier, such as a driver license number, being skeptical of emails and incoming phone calls and not oversharing online:

Don’t over-share online. Until 2011, the Social Security Administration assigned Social Security numbers in a predictable way. “If you share your birthday, age and place of birth, for example, on Facebook, studies have shown that Social Security numbers can be predicted based on publicly available information,” Messing says. “The Social Security Administration started randomly assigning Social Security numbers in June 2011 for that reason.” He recommends never publicly sharing your year of birth and choosing a different year when asked for online forms. “Add or subtract some years, as long as it’s a number you’ll remember,” he says.