social security number

Just because you're dead doesn't mean you can't be robbed. Identity thieves steal the personal information of about 2.4 million deceased Americans each year to apply for credit cards, cell phones and anything else requiring a credit check.

Each year, some 14,000 people are wrongly declared dead by the Social Security Administration, CNNMoney reports. Data-entry errors can lead to major financial turmoil for victims of these mistakes, who they can lose their benefits and credit.

At least 16% of Americans have engaged in some kind of identity fraud -- lying about their Social Security number, name or birthday -- on applications for goods and services, a new study reveals. That's 45 million people trying to game the system, and every time one succeeds, he or she may be making trouble for you.

With identity theft on the rise, more consumers are actively seeking ways to protect themselves. New companies have sprung up to address their fears, but how well do they really work?

Sure, you keep your Social Security number confidential. However, according to researchers from Carnegie Mellon University, it's possible for crooks to guess most of the digits in the Social Security number of many Americans using publicly-available information. Researchers Alessandro Acquisti...

Colleges, banks and hospitals rank among the most unsafe places to disclose your Social Security number, the computer security firm McAfee says in its blog. Consumers are forced to regularly disclose Social Security numbers to all kinds of organizations, including hospitals, insurers, banks,...

College students may just be discovering themselves, but thieves are out there, waiting to steal their identities, fledgling or not. Identity theft is not just stealing and using someone's credit cards, but also gathering information such as names, Social Security numbers, passwords, and address...

As you may have heard, Citibank messed up. Big time. It accidentally sent out more than 600,000 mailings to customers with their Social Security numbers printed on the outside of the envelopes. One of WalletPop's editors was one of those 600,000, and she received a letter from Citibank that read...

A St. Louis homeless man, trying to stay warm, stumbled on the personal information of Macy's shoppers as he was building himself a bed with trash he found in a downtown store's Dumpster. And it's not the first time that's happened for that particular store.

Take a minute and think about how many companies and institutions you have entrusted with your personal information like a Social Security number or bank account. More than likely you've given this information to an apartment complex, school, loan company, banks and credit card companies. You'd be...