On Jan. 2, 2002, Harry Valetk of the Social Security Administration (SSA) reported in these pages that there are now some 500,000 cases per year of the crime called “identity theft.”[1]

“Identity theft” refers to misuse of another’s identifying information for financial gain. Recently, increasing use of the Social Security Number (SSN) as an identifier for dozens of purposes has made the SSN the preferred tool of the identity thief.