I called the 888 number to opt out of receiving prescreened offers of credit. It asks for both my social security number and my date of birth. This is giving me huge red flags. Is this really what we have to do? Since we all spend time and money telling our customers not to provide personal information to outside sources is this a conspiracy to get consumers to freak out and hang up and stay in the loop?

Are you asking, or telling? Sounds like more the former, and I don't disagree. There should be some other way to identify the caller, but I don't know what all the choices are. But which opt out are you calling for?

I did opt out of prescreening and it freaked me out, too. My only piece of advice is to be very, very sure you are utilizing the correct phone number. I would urge you to get it directly from the FTC site, so you are at least positive you're dealing with the right people.

FTC Opt Out info

I too opted out of prescreened offers in July 2003. So far, no one has used my identifying info. (not that I know of anyway!)

They need your social security number because that is how the credit report is matched with you. There are a lot of people named John Smith (and probably a lot born on the same day), however, each one has a different social.

I was taught years ago that they looked more heavily at the address than the SSN because with numbers data input could be wrong more often than the address. This may not be true any longer. I suppose using the SSN also eliminates confusion over address abbreviations and is easier to input on a numeric keypad.

Ahou,
You have made such a profound statement, and I don't think that you realize it. You said in the end of your post that no one has used your information (that you know of). You are correct. You don't know. This is exactly the problem that your employers and and your employers clients should be dealing with. The real problem is that under FACTA we are as an industry (actually anyone that does business in the U.S.), now potentially liable for what we, and they, don't know; whether information has been compromised. Right now some individual or criminal organization may be robbing you or your clients blind and there is no mechanism (saving normal security processes)that is in place to inform you of the intrusion that would allow you to contain the damages. Unfortunately, normal security processes are being breached every day. (normal and what I thought to be super secure security processes..ie fingerprints and retina identification that are not totally secure) Facta liability should change the way we are looking at data security. It will cost far less to initiate proactive strategies that offer a security mechanism even "after" information is compromised, then to wait until it happens and absorb the damages. We did not have to think in this way two years ago, but today it would be foolish not to. There are a number of sites out there that address this issue. Go to Yahoo, MSN, Google, Exactseek or the like and type in Keywords: FACTA Liability. There are some solutions that are offered that are feesible; although they do require "thinking outside of the box".