Thieves can steal, sell your identity

It's not the backpack or purse stuffed with your cell phone, checkbook or wallet full of dollar bills and credit cards. Nor is it the expensive sports car in the parking lot.

The insurance money will cover a new car, and credit card companies will replace the credit cards.

What the thieves go after now is your identity.

Once they have it, they sell it to buyers who have no credit history, a bad credit record or to someone trying to establish a new identity.

Look at your Beach card. Your Social Security number is on it. That number is your student identification, written on all your records in computers on papers all over the campus.

You punch it into the Voice Response Registration, give it out as identification at hospitals, and on the phone when you call for your bank balance. You even list it on those credit card applications you get in the mail and on your drivers' license.

Identity thieves also know that your mother's maiden name is used by banks as verification of your identity instead of a pin number.    So if they have your Social Security number and your mother's maiden name, your identity is a commodity that will bring in more money than a cell phone.

We buy paper shredders to prevent garbage can scavengers from finding pieces of papers containing account numbers and our Social Security number, but voluntarily give the information to anyone who asks.

Repairing ruined credit is a nightmare that takes years to correct.

Sen. Debra Bowen of Redondo Beach has a bill before the State Senate Judiciary Committee that will bar colleges, health-care providers and others from using an individual's Social Security number as identification.

The costs of changing to another system will be huge, and there will be opposition from universities and health-care facilities, but the security of thousands of students and their future depends on action by the university systems to implement the changes if the bill passes.

Action should begin now to find new ways to identify students that will not put their future financial security in jeopardy.

How about just using names instead of numbers?