damaged people dot com

I know for fact that there are at least 4 people using my social security number out there (I first found out when I filed my first income tax at age 15, then again when I ordered phone service for a new appartment I was moving to).

MSNBC has a rather lenghty article about this kind of identity theft here.

I think it's bullshit that they refuse to inform the real owner of the SSN that someone else is using it. From what I've read, this can totally screw up your life.

I've tried to get a new number, but they won't do that either.

Good times on the horizion!

The SSA is -supposed- to give you a new number if you request it, -AND- (and this is the trick part) you can prove someone else is using it and causing harm.

If you ask me, the whole system is BS at this point.

example.

When Sam was born, we had to file SSA paperwork at the hospital, all according to the law now.

We never got his card.

We ended up having to go to the local SSA office. It took my wife over two weeks, and practically an act of Congress for them to give us the damn number. When we told them, hey, how do we know it wasn't stolen in the mail? We want a new number. They told us we'd have to wait to see if the actual number issued was used and/or abused, and then we'd have to provide proof. But they couldn't even give us the stinkin' number they had issued, so we could even -know- if the damn thing had been abused.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!

It was really pissing me off.

Finally, my wife went back, one more time, with Sam, his birth certificate, his shot records, his first six months of doctor records, blah blah blah. She get's there, and the gal at the window is a friend of ours who we never even knew worked in that office. Less than two minutes later, my wife walks out with his original number. WTF?

Turns out if you know someone there, you can actually get the straight poop. They sent out his card, to our physical address, which we had annotated on the registration forms did -not- receive US Postal Service. Your government beauracracy at work, they sent it there anyway. . . . And it promptly got returned, so they neatly filed it away, figuring we'd just figure the whole thing out by osmosis. bastards.

Our friend got it all figured out for us, and issued Sam's original card to us, problem solved. But what a pain in the ass to get straight.

In your situation, it makes a person so mad, they think about just using any other number, I mean what the hell, pick one from some dead guy.

I sympathize, it's infuriating.

In July of last year the TOTAL american population was 293Million+
The total number of social security numbers are 999,999,999. They're stingy with the numbers because they have to be. They'll run out if they're not carefull. Sure it seems like that's got an excess of 700m numbers but if everyone got a new number it's closer to 400m AND consider how many people have been ISSUED SSN's and died. How many are left?