Social Security Number safety?

Applying to College
1

<p>I mailed out 8 letters to 8 different schools, a couple days after the January 1 deadline for most of them. I wrote "Supplementary Statement on Research" on the envelope. For identification, because I only had Application ID's for a handful of schools, I wrote my SSN at the top of each letter. The ENTIRE number, not just the last 4 digits.</p>

<p>Yeah, I was dumb.</p>

<p>If any of the letters arrive at an odd destination, they'd be opened and the result might not be so pretty. Also, I can't know when the consequences will surface, if they do at all.</p>

<p>Is there any action I should take right now?</p>

2

<p>Maybe call and find out if the school recieved them.</p>

3

<p>Yeah, that's pretty much all you can do right now... call the school and explain your concern to them, and ask if you can find out if/when they've safely arrived.</p>

4

<p>wait did you write your SSN on the envelope? ummm... you probably need to take the steps necessary to make sure you don't become a victim of identity theft. also based on what you are saying it sounds like you didn't mail it Certified Mail or anything like that? talk to your parents this is very, very bad.</p>

<p>if you didn't do that, then it's probably a non-issue, and you should just call the school.</p>

5

<p>i literally lol-ed when i read this-im sry</p>

6

<p>That sucks, but I cannot imagine how much damage an ID thief could possibly do with the SSN of a pre-college kid who likely has nothing in the bank, no financial assets, and may not even be old enough to get loans yet. I would just call to make sure everything is alright. At worse, you can maybe freeze your SSN or something so people cannot use it to get a credit card or somthing crazy like that.</p>

7

<p>Not on the envelope haha. I wrote it in the top margin of the letter that was inside the envelope.</p>

<p>All that was on the outside was the standard addresses and a line "Statement on Research".</p>

8

<p>I hope its not that bad, I just did the same thing on something I sent to 3 schools.</p>

9

<p>y didnt you just use the schools code for u like appId, thats what i did and i sent 9 of these like 1 week ago</p>

10

<p>Only a few schools had given me an ID. It was January 2nd or 3rd when I sent these out. The best thing to do if you don't have an ID is to include the last 4 digits of your SSN. I was just not thinking and put the entire thing.</p>

<p>It was a last-minute worry that they wouldn't be able to identify me... haha, so that was the only thing that was handwritten on the stuff I sent.</p>