T3B@PSUVM.BITNET (Tom Benson) (08/04/87)
Gene Spafford writes of the hassle of protecting his Social Security number from GTE. I don't doubt what he says about the privacy issues involved, but I must admit I understand them only very imperfectly. What sort of information, exactly, is available, in what ways, and to whom, with somebody else's social security number? Is this primarily a big brother (that is, big government) matter, or is the social security number also vulnerable to corporations and private hackers? Here at Penn State, and I suspect this is true at many large institutions, all faculty and students have an ID number -- yes, it is the social security number. It is printed on an ID card (which is required to check books out of the library), and listed in all sorts of places (such as class registration lists, grade cards, transcripts). How much of protecting the privacy of one's social security number is simply a matter of principle, and how much is it a matter of actually safeguarding information about oneself? Tom Benson