<\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n\nThe previous sections have focused on the history of SSN in federal and state government use.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There was a parallel expansion in the use by commercial organizations. There is a challenge with accurately tracking the history there because many commercial organizations were very secretive about how they used customer data.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And the credit reporting agencies were the most secretive of all. These specialist agencies had been collecting and storing consumer information since the previous century. This was information like unpaid loans, overdrafts, and late credit card payments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There was little awareness up until the 1960s on the sheer breadth of information being tracked and stored. Many agencies simply refused to allow private citizens from accessing the information in these files.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The entire purpose of these agencies was to sell the information to other businesses such as retail and financial companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Up until the advent of the SSN, they were having to rely on names and addresses to track individuals across consumer interactions with different businesses. This was a problem with the John Smiths of this world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And as many people change address (sometimes to evade being tracked), this identification was a major headache.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
SSN to the rescue<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
The expansion of SSN was a massive benefit to commercial interests.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
By 1996, companies didn\u2019t even have to ask over the phone for an SSN when dealing with a customer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
They just needed to ask for a copy of a driving license. That year, it was mandatory to have the SSN on driving licenses.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It\u2019s easy to think that SSNs have always been with us, but this isn\u2019t true. They have a history that started in the era of the Great Depression. The original goal was not to have a universal identity number for Americans. This article shows you how they started and how they become what we know … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bandittracker.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/462"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bandittracker.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bandittracker.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bandittracker.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bandittracker.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=462"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/bandittracker.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/462\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":464,"href":"https:\/\/bandittracker.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/462\/revisions\/464"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bandittracker.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=462"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bandittracker.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=462"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bandittracker.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=462"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}