Experian Sold Social Security Numbers To ID Theft Service

realized writes "Experian — one of the three national U.S. credit bureaus — reportedly sold SSNs through its subsidiary, Court Ventures, to the operators of SuperGet.info who then offered all of the information online for a price. The website would advertise having '99% to 100% of all USA' in their database on websites frequented by carders. Hieu Minh Ngo, the website owner, was recently been indicted for 15-counts filed under seal in November 2012, charging him with conspiracy to commit wire fraud, substantive wire fraud, conspiracy to commit identity fraud, substantive identity fraud, aggravated identity theft, conspiracy to commit access device fraud, and substantive access device fraud."

Why is SSN secret?

[bigwheel]

I never understood why social security numbers have become secret. It was my student ID both in undergrad and grad school. Available to everyone. Once upon a time, you were even supposed to keep your social security card in your wallet. Now it needs to be kept secret, along with my mother's maiden name.

It is just a has code -- not a password.

Re:Why is SSN secret?

[ComfortablyAmbiguous]

Besides that, it's a horrible, horrible secret. Until just a few years ago the first five digits could be easily determined from your birthday and location of birth, leaving only 4 digits of somewhat randomness, and even that went in sequential order, giving you a pretty good guess at a much small range. To add insult to injury, whenever a company thinks they are helping you keep it secret they will ask you for the last four digits of the number, the only four digits that actually matter.

Re:Why is SSN secret?

[thaylin]

because with your SSN now you have access to EVERY other piece of information. Forget your password with any company that has your SSN and they will use your SSN as the ultimate password.

Re:Probably a downmod coming but..

[binarylarry]

Agreed. I'd vote for hanging some of the Experian exec responsible for this.

Re:FREE AS IN BEER MARKET !!

[Anonymous Coward]

4. Get one rifle shot shot at long range from a citizen who got screwed in the bargain. Make it a .50 caliber.

I've been saying since Enron we should add more FEAR to the "greed and fear run Wall St." aphorism...

captcha: brooms (which sweep clean)

I'm Dead

[Princeofcups]

These are the same fuckers who insisted that I was dead because someone had mistyped a social security number. Therefore they rejected all credit requests (I was trying to get financing on a car) until I could prove that I was still alive. That's right. If they make a mistake, the victim, errr, customer, has to correct it.

Re:What about Experian?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because criminal culpability usually requires intent. This would require the prosecutor to show that Experian executives either knew about it or suspected it, or should have known about it but were too wreckless in their supervisory duties. Obviously the latter is more likely, but that can be tough to prove. Experian would bring in an army of experts to explain to the jury why the executives lived up to every reasonable standard, and that these mistakes happen every once in awhile, etc.

In many other countries criminal culpability doesn't require such a high standard of intent, and in some cases none at all. These also tend to be poor and underdeveloped countries, where moral outrage tends to drown out reasonable business expectations. These are countries where philosophy students write the laws.

There's a reason why America is the richest country in the world. We have one of the best environments for business in the world. We just have a really fscked-up wealth distribution problem, and also a drastically underfunded investigative apparatus to enforce our existing white collar crime laws.

Solution: Make SSNs Public Record

[Anonymous Coward]

The solution to this issue is for the Social Security Administration to publish EVERY SSN along with name in a big set of phone type books, and online. The SSN was never intended to be a secret number.

Banks and credit organisations who use the SSN as some sort of secret code can find some other real authentication method. Publishing them all at once would 'shock' the system into the fix that is needed.

Re:Since you mentioned Experian

[ShanghaiBill]

They can't use FICO because it's owned by a third party (Fair Isaac)

Wrong. They can and do give out FICO numbers. They just don't give it out to you, as an individual, when you pay $7 for your "credit score", because they don't want to pay a fee to Fair Isaac. Instead they give you a number that is just meaningless garbage. 99% of the people paying the $7 think they are are going to get their actual FICO score. I fell for this scam myself.

Re:15 counts of wire fraud explained.

[Bob the Super Hamste]

That actually happened to my wife. She got a call from American Express stating that we were in default on a card she had taken out and bills were being sent to an address in Las Vegas. They demanded that we pay in the most aggressive legal way they could. I told them that it isn't my fault that they didn't do their due diligence in giving out credit and that since it was a credit card we were only liable for up to $50 of it and I wasn't going to even pay that since neither of us had ever been in Nevada let alone Las Vegas. I then mentioned that if I ever heard from them again I would be filing charges against them for attempting to defraud me and would also be filing a complaint with my state's attorney general. Never heard back from them. I do the same thing with the idiots who keep buying someone's bad college loan debt that was accrued 14 years before I was born who happens to share my name. Some new company seems to buy it every 2-3 years and then they start calling or sending mail so I don't know if it is a scam or not but I treat it as if it were one.

Re:Probably a downmod coming but..

[synapse7]

So are all SSNs compromised?

Re:Solution: Make SSNs Public Record

[careysb]

+1 I've had to argue with more than one health insurance company to get them to not use my SSN as an ID number. Tell you what, along with publishing numbers lets also guarantee duplicate SSNs. That'll fix 'em.