Why You Shouldn’t Provide Experian With Your Social Security Number
Your social security number is in fact among the most crucial and secure numbers of personal identity available. This nine-digit number is sometimes connected with jobs, financial information, and many more. This is why one should be careful about with whom to reveal the secret or rather, who to share it with.
Are credit reporting companies like Experian deserving of your social security information or not? This is a question I have. The following topics will be the main emphasis of this paper: a quick overview of Experian's background, how they utilize your number, the risks involved in utilizing this service, and some of the alternatives that are accessible. Go on to get additional knowledge required to decide on the data with Experian in line.
What is Experian?
Among the "big three" credit reporting companies or bureaus used in the United States of America is Experian. Equifax and Trans Union are the second two others mentioned. Such companies compile information on people's borrowing patterns and debt-repayment capacity and compile it into credit reports.
The credit firm will most likely ask for credit reports from one or more of these agencies if you apply for credit—that of a credit card, vehicle loan, or mortgage. Lenders use it to evaluate your loan repayment capacity and make a choice on whether or not to provide credit to you.
Experian provides credit risk data to lenders as well, but it also provides credit monitoring and identity protection tools to people. For these services, you would establish an account for which Experian needs personal information.
How your Social Security Number is used by Experian?
If you have applied for credit or have accounts which you are associating with, Experian most likely already has your SSN. Consumers provide such information including this number to the lenders who in turn relay the information to the credit reference firms at the time of account opening in the form of a new loan account or a credit card account.
With this particular number, Experian will be able to consolidate all of your credit accounts together with your payment history on the credit reports that lenders see. This assists potential creditors in assessing your ability to repay the money when you apply for new credit.
If you enroll yourself for direct-to-consumer services offered by Experian like credit monitoring, they will utilize your social security number to obtain your credit reports from the databases maintained by it to continue to monitor your reports for fraudulent activities.
Pros and Cons of Providing Experian Your SSN
The biggest danger that comes with sharing one's social security number with Experian or any other company is that you might become a victim of identity theft. If hackers gain access to Experian’s network and obtain the consumers’ PII, they can use your number to apply for credit cards or other products in your absence.
But with many major data breaches compromising millions of its customers, Experian's reputation in protecting consumer data has not been particularly strong recently. Among the well-publicized data breaches of previous years, T-Mobile had customer data exposed in 2015 impacting 15 million of its clients, including Experian; sensitive information including the social security number was taken from Experian servers.
Though it is evident that Experian has since then strengthened its security measures, no organization that possesses enormous collections of people’s private data can always be entirely safe. Once a number is out there, there is no way of being certain that the identity or safety of the number will remain secure for one’s entire lifetime.
Apart from cyber threats, there is another physical threat where a wrong employee may use and sell customer information that is supposed to be secure. Moreover, it may prove challenging to make sure that Experian deletes your social in the future if you do not wish to interact with their services in the future, but merely deactivating your account will suffice. This means that regardless of whether you want to continue using their services or not, your number will still be with them for as long as they want.
Other Options to Deem Before Conveying Your SSN to Experian
If you feel uncomfortable providing your social security number to Experian, there are a few potential alternatives to consider: If you feel uncomfortable providing your social security number to Experian, there are a few potential alternatives to consider:
Use a Credit Reporting Agency That Doesn't Require Your SSN: For example, to obtain simple credit reports and scores, you could use Credit Karma which does not require you to provide a social security number. They can notify you of any changes in your Equifax or TransUnion credit reports using this information, though they do not require such data. However, it is not necessarily as full-featured as the credit monitoring.
Freeze Your Credit Reports: C credit freezing limits the lenders who can check your credit since those who wish to do so cannot do so without a password that only you have. This also helps in avoiding any form of identity theft and unauthorized opening of accounts by criminals. But it also means that to apply for legitimate credit yourself, the reports have to be manually unfrozen every time.
Rely on Credit Monitoring From Your Bank or Credit Card: Today, several banks and credit card companies such as Chase and Discover offer their customers to check their scores and reports without any charges or fees besides informing facilities. This credit monitoring does not involve releasing your social. As long as you identify the act of fraud early enough, you can go ahead and order a new card immediately or contact the bank if you realize that your card has been compromised.
Check Your Credit Reports Annually: Customers are allowed to get one copy of their credit report from each of the three reporting bureaus once a year. All you have to do is go to annualcreditreportcom to retrieve the copies of your report which Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion provide for free once each year to check for fraudulent accounts without having to pay for credit monitoring services. It just takes your extra effort to look for them and it is easier if you are assigned to one specific school.
The old question again: should you let Experian look at your number?
In conclusion, it is up to the user to determine if they want to present their social security number to be used by Experian, which is a matter of choice between gaining comfort or risking personal information exposure. I believe, there are not only valid considerations in favor of such an approach but valid considerations against it as well.
On the one hand, allowing access to Experian can enable them to give you extremely detailed credit reports because all the accounts connected to you have links through your SSN. Well, the security of Experian may well just be strong enough to protect your number from dangers today.
On a positive note, if your social security number is ever leaked in a data breach, then identifying and rectifying identity theft is almost impossible and a process that may take several years. You may also calculate that the convenience of having Experian monitor your data just isn’t worth the tiny possibility of exposure to such data.
Think over the pros and cons – and other possibilities such as the options illustrated above – and decide whether you would be okay with sharing your social security number with Experian or not. Assess how much risk would be comfortable for you as an individual and make the choice that will make you have sound sleep.
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