Employment verifications and your social security number

Have you ever seen an employment verification from Choicepoint?  This is something that a prospective employer might use to confirm that your employment background is as you told them. I have one in my hands right now. It has the person’s full name, social security number, and date of birth. It arrived in the mail today.

I assume that Choicepoint does over a million of these a year. I don’t know how many are mailed to former employers, but I bet it’s in the hundreds of thousands.

This is another example of how your sensitive data flies around, unprotected, all the time. The counter point is this: What if the former employer is large and needs your SSN and DOB to confirm it has the correct person? But couldn’t they just send the SSN with all but 4 digits redacted? And give the recipient the option of confirming the SSN by telephone. Why is the default always to send our SSN? Because it’s easier.

Comments

[Ted Richardson]

In light of the rash of data breaches, a lot of the data brokers are already masking SSN's. Since the potential employer is already provided with a SSN (that they are supposed to be verifying) by the appliciant - there is no need for Choicepoint to continue this practice.

If there is an issue - such as multiple names showing up - I always recommend taking a look at the date/state of issuance to see if it makes sense, and or verifying directly with the SSA.