SSN's and ID Theft

[Fairlight]

This public service announcement was brought to you by Mike Schwartz (PC Support):
> 
>      If you are certain that there are businesses who do NOT need the SS#
> and are not offering an alternate numbering system, then you should advise
> them that they should be doing so.  

Depending on how annoyed I've been with the institution, I've commented on
it in the past.  Usually (true to form), they don't give a damn.

>      You can still obtain blocks of these "dead" numbers from the FEDS.
> They are kind of like 555 phone numbers.

Interesting.  Wasn't aware there was a "dead pool" of any sort.

>      (This was a really big deal at the U of Wis. during the Vietnam War.
> We got a lot of guys who thought it would help them hide from the draft if
> they didn't use their real SS#.)

Cute.

>      When we hashed this over a few years ago, I called my brother, who
> still worked in the registrar's office at UW-Stout.  He said that they still
> did have an alternate system, and that they had one for all the years he
> worked there, so I believe whoever told you that the U of Wis. does not have
> an alternate SS# system is mistaken.

It's not that I was told UofWis doesn't have such a system.  It's that
it's not advertised, either conspicuously or inconspicuously.  They want
your SSN, period, the end.  Ditto with DMV prior to any recent changes.
Ditto with most places that want to uniquely identify someone.  They don't
advertise that you have a choice--or didn't when I was in university.
Hell, -nothing- about college was actually about having a choice, the way
they did things.  It may as well have been the military in some respects.
Actually, they still maintain that mentality in their Computing Services
departments, as well as their residence departments, which is inexcusable
since NSF pulled backbone support and their policies with it.  My brother
can't get DSL or Cable because UofWis has contracts with the cable company
and there's no way DSL will work over the Uni phone fiasco--er, system, and
they (illegally, I might add, after the U of Texas getting slapped down by
the FCC because ONLY the FCC has the ability to regulate wireless) have a
ban on WLAN's in the dorms.  And they run his campus through two ATM clouds
there, a third at another campus, and -finally- to Madison, where it goes
out a crappy link.  You don't even want to know his ping times.  900ms+ to
most things.  Forget about file transfers, large emails, or games.  They're
lucky they even pass packets through all those clouds supporting several
campuses.  Compared to Milwaukee, which was and is on its own connection,
the rest of the campuses' topographies are determined more by politicians
than IT professionals that actually know what the hell they're doing.

And the funny thing is how the universities so readily forget that you're
paying (at a 10% increase PER YEAR) tuition that makes you -their boss-.
You in -no- way should be beholden to them--you're paying the damned bills!
But they're too idiotic, greedy, and power hungry to see the truth.

I digress.  It's just another example of their incompetence at work.

But no, they certainly never advertised a dead pool when I attended.  I bet
if you took a survey of students, probably <5% (I'd actually bet <1%) are
aware such a creature exists.  Actually, I did ask someone about the SSN
legality at UWM once--at the Registrar's office.  They said nothing about
an alternate system under direct questioning.  You need an SSN, period, is
what I was told.  Either they lied (I can believe that, having been there
for several years and seeing how the institution works), or they don't even
bother informing their employees about the system.

mark->
-- 
There is no "I" in TEAM.
This would be the primary reason I've chosen not to join one.