Protecting your Personal Information
Protecting Your Social Security Number at Duke
A Social Security Number is intended to identify wage earners in the US in order to accurately
record their earnings. Most employees are required to pay a certain percentage of their earnings
to the Social Security System through the Federal Insurance Compensation Act (the FICA tax). Your
Social Security Number is used to identify you and ensure that your earnings and FICA taxes are
properly recorded. While a Social Security Number can be one of several ways to identify an
individual for purposes of tax or earnings reporting, it is an inappropriate number to use to
authenticate someone's identity for other purposes. Social Security Numbers will continue to be
required for employment, for financial aid, for transactions that require reporting to federal
agencies, and as a business necessity for certain transactions.
As a student, faculty or staff member at Duke, before you give out
your Social Security number to someone at Duke, ask what it will be used for. Unless your Social Security number is
needed for employment or tax purposes, or some other legitimate purpose, consider offering your
Duke Unique ID or some other form of identification instead. If someone asks for your Social Security
Number, ask the following questions:
- Why do you need my Social Security Number?
- How will my Social Security Number be used?
- What law requires me to give you my Social Security Number?
- What will happen if I don’t give you my Social Security Number?
Sometimes a business may not provide you with the service or benefit you’re seeking if you
don’t provide your Social Security Number. Getting answers to these questions will help you
decide whether you want to share it with the business. Remember – the decision is yours.
Check these links for more information on the use of Social Security Numbers
How to Protect Your Credit Card Information when Shopping Online
Unfortunately,it is not possible to be completely safe regardless of what you do; however,
these tips may save you some hassle. These tips were offered up
in a discussion amongst some of the system administrators.
- Make certain that the site is encrypting your credit card number
when you send it to them. Usually, your web browser will have a small
picture of a lock that is open at the bottom of the page. When the
company is using encryption the lock picture will show a closed lock
indicating increased security. Another way to determine if you are
using encryption is to check the URL of the current page (this is
often listed near the top of the web browser). If the page URL starts
with http:// then the page is NOT encrypted. If the URL starts with
https:// then the page is encrypted.
- Consider using only one credit card online. This may not
protect that one credit card, but it definitely limits your exposure.
- Use a credit card that has a good policy regarding your
liability in case the credit card number has been stolen. Most major
credit cards limit your liability to $50 or less; however, you should check on
the specifics of your card.
- Never use a debit card online. Surely you would
prefer to dispute a potential charge on a credit card than a charge that has
wiped out your checking account.
- Where possible, have your vendor NOT store your credit card
number for use next time. This is no guarantee that they don't have
your credit card number stored in a database, but, it may keep
your card number off of their web server.
- Finally, some credit card companies may offer one-time use credit
card numbers that are tied to your main account. You present the
one-time use number to the vendor, to whom it looks like a regular
credit card number, but any subsequent attempts to use it will be
denied. This is probably the BEST way of protecting yourself.
