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Background Checks Criminal Records Economy Human Resources Miscellany

Cautionary Tales on the Social Security Trace Background Check

For pre-employment screening, one of the more essential background checks is the Social Security Trace.  This background check not only validates your job applicant social security number but provides their address history that assists in conducting the other background searches, such as criminal records and civil records.  The Social Security Trace is also a good way to assess where your employment candidate is eligible to work in the United States.   With E-Verify  or the I09 you first have to offer your candidate the job.  With the SSN Trace you can conduct the search as a pre-employment screening background check.

The Social Security Face is cost effective and has a rapid turnaround time.  But then every once in awhile you will see headlines like this where some agency public or private agency is vulnerable enough that hackers gain access to a whole bunch of Social Security Numbers.     Or in the recent case where no hackers are necessary as the public agency dropped its figurative cyber pants long enough to actually make public their database containing social security numbers.  Whoops.

Such is the case in Maryland where a state employee  from the Department of Human Resources posted some 3,000 social security numbers.   According to the Baltimore Sun, said these are from department for handling welfare benefits for needy families.  The employee was suspended.   But the social security numbers were made available to anyone with access to the Internet.

So what happens now.  As most employers request the social security number in order to confirm their job applicant is eligible, we will probably see a fair number of undocumented workers presenting these spanking newly released, lemon scented social security numbers showing up around the country.  Because that is how it works.  Somebody sells the SSNs or hands them out to their twenty nine best friends.  If you think I am kidding, we at Corra Group have been Social Security Traces with twenty-odd different names listed on them.

Which is all the more reason to conduct the Social Security Trace as a background check.  By doing so, we can usually verify the true owner of that social security number.  So check them out before you hire.

So

By Gordon Basichis

Gordon Basichis is the Co-Founder of Corra Group, specializing in pre-employment background checks and corporate research. He has been a marketing and media executive and has worked in the entertainment industry, the financial, health care and technology sectors. He is the author of the best selling Beautiful Bad Girl, The Vicki Morgan Story, a non-fiction novel that helped define exotic sexuality in the late twentieth century. He is the author of the Constant Travellers and has recently completed a new book, The Guys Who Spied for China, dealing with Chinese Espionage in the United States. He has been a journalist for several newspapers and is a screenwriter and producer.