Campus Life Features Special Circumstances

 In the campus community, the social security number has a wide array of uses. Students are asked frequently to disclose their social security number in order to:

• Receive grades;
• Register for classes; and
• Access housing records and other student files.

  Many times, the social security number is all a person needs to assume someone else’s identity. Most students do not realize how sensitive the social security number is and the havoc it can cause if placed in the wrong hands.

  Students also make attractive targets for the following reasons:

• Lack of attention to credit issues- They very seldom check their credit ratings or records. Most students figure since they only have a minimum wage job, if any, and few assets, they are not likely targets. The reality is this makes it easy for identity theft to occur and the identity can be used for a long time without the student’s knowledge.

• Ease of accessibility to credit- It is easy for college students to obtain credit cards. In order for most people to establish a credit history, they have to have previously had a credit card or loan.

 College students, because of special promotions, receive credit cards without a prior credit history, which makes attending college one of the easiest times to establish credit. With the right personal information, identity thieves can obtain credit cards using students’ names.

 University professors, as a group, also possess many of the traits identity thieves look for in a victim. They are paid well and have good job security. What puts this group most at risk is the fact that their names, work titles, employer and academic background are all public record information.

  Most university catalogs yield this information. One ring if identity thieves operated in the Pacific Northwest for a number of years in the mid-1990’s. The ring specialized in stealing identities of university professors. Washington State had their identities stolen before the ring stopped operating in the late 1990s.

 Many colleges make it simple to learn how long someone has worked there by providing a central number to call to verify the employment status of any faculty or staff member.

 By reading the college catalog and making a couple of phone calls, the identity thief has just about all the information he or she needs. The only other information needed at this point is the social security number and birthdate, both of which can be purchased on the Internet for a nominal fee.

 Consider the following cases, one in which the college loan processor provided the connection, and the second in which an administrative employee used access to student information.

 A woman was sentenced to federal prison for stealing the identity of a university professor. The woman admitted that she assumed the identity of another woman with a similar name to obtain loans she was not qualified to receive.

  The victim, an English professor at a Georgia college, had graduated for a college in Arizona that the defendant also briefly attended, and both women had received student loans that were administered through the same company.

  Due to a computer mix-up, documents belonging to the professor- which included her social security number- were sent to the defendant. Shortly thereafter, the professor began receiving calls from companies that she had never heard of claiming she owed them large sums of money.