Identity Theft-What Can Really be Done w/o a SSN?

TheItalianGuy asks: "Many of us that work in the financial sector are bombarded with daily security threats. One of the biggest these days is Identity Theft. My fellow comrades and I have been really grilling each other on differing scenarios on what could be done with what information. However, it all seems to come back the the Social Security Number. Financial companies have other controls in place (customer service verification checking, account passwords, etc) to ensure identification. But in order to be of any use, a bad guy would really need someone's SSN. Absent of that, other information would be useless. Right? That's what I would like to ask Slashdot folks. What could be realistically done with customer information without a SSN? Account numbers, address, maybe a phone or payment amount. Is that really dangerous to the customer if only those get compromised?"

Comments

What the Navy says about SSNs

[katana]

"Attack submarine, designed to seek and destroy enemy submarines and surface ships. Their other missions range from intelligence collection and special forces delivery to anti-ship and strike warfare. It is a multi-mission vessel, capable of deploying to forward ocean areas to search out and destroy enemy submarines and surface ships and to fire missiles in support of other forces."

Sounds pretty serious. If you have an SSN, you should definitely not let another person or country get hold of it. Frankly, I'm amazed that anyone in America can get an SSN, but that's liberty for you.