Community

Do these retail organisations actually validate the SSN on-line against governent records? NO - so just give them any old 9 digit number in the format 3-2-4. There is no check digit to worry about. If you can't make one up, use the one that used to appear in wallets bought at Woolworths since 1938 : 078-505-1120. Will you have actually broken any law giving any old number to Blockbusters?

As a UK resident who is a frequent visitor to the USA, I don't have a US Social Security Number. However I do have to complete certain US IRS Forms, so I invented my own SSN/TIN (Taxpayer Identification Number) as my UK Payroll number padded out with zeros - eg 000-12-3456. That has been accepted for over 20 years, even on official IRS papers such as W9(BEN) - and I've never been prosecuted or denied my Tax Refunds or Dividends.

That way - the bureaucrats are satisfied, but you have the personal satisfaction knowing you've beaten the system.

To respond to the latter comments :

if I see a car with the keys in the ignition and I knew the owner I would take the keys to stop it being stolen

if I saw a handbag belonging to a co-worker lying unattended on the desk I would move it and put it out of sight in a desk drawer

if I saw a PC still switched on after 6pm when the owner has gone home I will switch it off, and if its unsecured I will remove it and lock it away.

Its called looking after your friends, neighbours & colleagues.

It is so easy to do if you just feel confident about yourself - I recall visiting a Client on the outskirts of Paris, and finding myself at 11am in an unattended Office suite, looking at the Laptop of the Financial Director of a large Pharmaceutical Company, reading his Q1 Cash Flow Forecast, with no ScreenSaver having kicked in - and no-one ever challenged me.

Another time I was visiting a Financial Services Company in Leeds, and was impressed by their due care within the office to ensure that confidential waste paper was deposited in secure containers. But the next morning I saw the local Security firm park their pickup truck unsecured & unattended in the car park, so to prove I could do it I climbed into the back of the truck (ostensibly as if to steal the confidential waste already in there) and no-one challenged me. The truck was covered by CCTV, but I could see that the on-site Security Guard had left his command post to go and unlock the room where the confidential waste had been stored overnight.  

In both instances my colleagues who with me were paranoid we were going to be arrested, but nobody batted an eyelid.

What was amusing was a couple of days later they interviewed HMRC on BBC Radio 4 Today program and HMRC boasted they'd done a lot of thorough testing - thanks heavens for that then - what would it have been like without testing? Since when did this not include end-to-end testing viewing / saving / printing the final submission?

The problem is that instead of the Industry keeping the Security Code truly secret, Consumers have become accustomed to having to provide it to E-Commerce Merchants at checkout; consequently they will not be suspicious when a Fraudster asks for it.

I'm happy with my Xiring Card Reader from Royal Bank of Scotland.

The only problem was when it 'broke' after 6 months. I ordered a replacement on-line which was promised in 3 days but I had to re-order it in person when it hadn't arrived after 10 days and I was getting desperate running out of cheques.

Thereafter in the space of 5 days 3 Xiring readers arrived - which is great for when I misplace any one of them. I certainly wouldn't rely on only having one from now on, but would always have a 'spare' in the house no matter who I banked with.

Of course the answer is : who said it has to really be your Mothers Maiden Name? Is the Bank etc going to validate it when you first supply it? Actually its just any old secret password, and so long as you remember what you supplied it can be any old Name. I opt for reverse logic - eg supply the Married Name of one of my Maternal Aunts - you'd have to search a long through the Census to find out what it is - and I could be lying anyway!

Mothers Maiden Name was never a good idea - given that it was always in the public domain if you wanted to check with the Registrar of Births - the census just makes it easier.

For Hispanic names it was always a joke - given the convention of hyphenating both parents names together the conversation always went : Question : "Mr Sanchez-Ramos - what is your Mothers Maiden Name?" Answer : "you just said it to me"

You still need to be aware of Institutions who purport to have signed up for Faster Payments but haven't implemented it properly. Capital One claim to have signed up, but still take 5 working days to apply Funds sent over from First Direct/HSBC to their Credit Card account, so the Capital One Account goes Overdue and gets hit for Interest Charges and other exorbitant Fees.

My daughter had her Halifax CHIP and PIN Debit Card cloned in April 2006. She was a Student in Oxford, and 25 transactions totaling £1,500 were done all over Oxfordshire in towns & at stores she doesn’t usually frequent.

But how could she prove it wasn’t her, or that she hadn’t given the Card & PIN to an accomplice?

Fortunately she was also using the ‘real’ Card in Cambridge some 100 miles & 2 hours drive away within 20 minutes of one of the fraudulent transactions – so the Card couldn’t be in 2 places at one, or in the hands of an accomplice.

Presented with these facts, Halifax promptly capitulated, and gave back all of the money, not bothering to try & quibble about any of the disputed transactions.

I don’t have any CHIP & PIN Cards – I rely upon Signature as a rudimentary biometric. However, over the Christmas period, approximately 50% of my purchases at Bluewater were completed without Signature - the young kids in the shops presume you’ve put in a PIN even when I’ve made no attempt to – they just aren’t alert.