This Scam of the day is the second of three being posted in advance due to limited Internet access for me for the next couple of days. As I have reported to you many times over the years, most recently in January of this year, there has been a continuing upsurge of scams in which people are receiving phone calls from scammers posing as employees of the Social Security Administration (SSA). Just recently the Santa Barbara Police Department issued a new warning about these scam phone calls. In these phone calls the scammer informs the targeted victim that there has been a computer problem and it is necessary to confirm the person’s Social Security number. This is just a scam. The SSA will never be calling you to confirm your Social Security number, but a scammer will call you in order to lure you into providing it to him or her who will then use it to make you a victim of identity theft.
The Social Security Administration (SSA) has a helpful online service called My Social Security Account which allows you to set up a personal online account with the SSA that enables you to view your earnings history and estimates of benefits as well as manage your benefits online including changing your address or starting or changing direct electronic deposits of your check into a bank account you may designate.  This is a tremendously convenient service, but it also provides a great opportunity for scammers who are setting up My Social Security Accounts on behalf of seniors who have not already set up such accounts for themselves.  The scammers then make changes to the victim’s account by directing their benefits checks to be sent to bank accounts controlled by the scammers.  Even though  the Social Security Administration requires verification of personal information by asking questions that only the Social Security recipient should know as part of the process for opening a My Social Security Account, too often this information is available to a determined identity thief who is thereby able to fraudulently open an account in the name of their intended victim. The scammers often obtain their victims’ Social Security numbers through the phony phone calls I described in the first paragraph. It is important to remember that through “spoofing” you Caller ID can be manipulated to make it appear as if a call from a scammer is coming from the Social Security Administration.
TIPS
Just as the best defense against income tax identity theft is to file your income tax return before an identity thief attempts does so in your name, so the best defense against the fraudulent setting up of a My Social Security Account in your name is for you to set one up first and protect its safety with a strong username and password. For information about signing up for a My Social Security Account go to https://ssa.gov/myaccount/
You can also require that any changes to the bank account into which your check is electronically deposited only be done at a Social Security branch office and not on your online account.
If you receive a call, email or text message from someone purporting to be a Social Security Administration employee asking for personal information, you should not provide it. Instead, if you think that the communication may be legitimate, you should just call the Social Security Administration directly at 800-772-1213 to confirm whether or not the communication was legitimate.
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