I read several posts suggesting to redact personal information, say bank account number and social security numbers etc. Are we allowed to redact those information? It was never suggested in any documents provided by the colleges…
The IDOC filing instructions we received said to print the social security number(s) on the top right of each form submitted to IDOC, so I’m not sure redacting that information in the documents themselves would be acceptable to them.
It naturally should make anyone uncomfortable to submit personal information such as tax returns, social security numbers, etc. to third parties such as the College Board’s IDOC, FAFSA, and college financial aid offices, because we’re reliant on their information security practices and systems to protect our information from unauthorized disclosure or hacking.
Ultimately, you can upload redacted documents to IDOC and see if they and/or the college financial aid offices accept them that way, process them, and make them available to the requesting colleges with redacted personal information. After submitting documents to IDOC for four years to our D’s college plus the other colleges she applied to that requested IDOC documents, I never saw any directions or instructions to redact personal information in submitted documents.
thanks. I missed the part they said to print the Social security number on each form.
I haven’t done it this year but they haven’t asked for bank account numbers in the past. The forms they ask for are tax forms but I think redacting the SSN on those would defeat the purpose which is to prove you income. And as mentioned they ask you to put the SSN on each page (I had forgotten about that!).