MSNBC has released a scary story about Jonathan Barnett, 27, who came to find that nearly 50 names were attached to his Social Security Number. Despite this, he had a clean credit report and no problems with creditors in the past. He learned about the additional users of his SSN through a letter sent to him by
Wells Fargo with his SSN present but a different name. Wells Fargo told him it is most likely a typo but Barnett deciding to take the investigation into his own hands. After numerous open ended phone calls he came to discover that almost ever major creditor in the US had an account with his SSN and would not release the information to him. The only one willing to help was his own credit union which informed him that they suspected it was employment fraud, where undocumented workers use made up or stolen SSN to obtain work and most employers do not check this information's legitimacy; therefore, there is never an issue. What happens is the credit bureaus will actually open "sub-files" for these additional names under the same SSN and only provide each individual information on their own named "sub-files." This may sound shocking but a study was done by ID Analytics that found 40 million SSN's had numerous names attached to them. Barnett had contacted MSNBC for help regarding this issue and found through investigation that his SSN has a history of abuse dating back to 1995, which would have made him only 11 years old. This full story and others like it can be found HERE
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