SSN and your privacy from the school?

Paying for College
1

<p>Does school have the right to look up your personal info through SSN you provide them or is it merely used for them getting money from the government for you account?</p>

2

<p>The SSN is used to establish the fact that you’re a US citizen and thus eligible for federal aid. If you filed an income tax return, the SSN lets them verify that it’s yours. And it’s a unique identifier so that your records don’t get mixed up with anyone else’s.</p>

<p>I’m not sure what you mean by “look up your personal information.”</p>

3

<p>i mean whether school have the right to look up my background through ssn because you can do that. </p>

<p>i’m refering to stuff like financial history, employment history, family history and stuff like that that could be consider invasion of privacy.</p>

<p>i’m just curious whether the school knows those types of background info or not through them having access the my ssn. identity theft can happen with knowledge of ssn, not that i’m accusing the school of this though. cuz you know some employees like to snoop around with people’s ssn.</p>

<p>so i’m just wondering how safe my privacy is with the school. but if its just used professionally and don’t infringe on my privacy, then i have no problem with this.</p>

4

<p>Whenever an institution has access to your SSN, there is a chance that an unethical employee could use it for the wrong purposes. That would apply to colleges, as it would to banks, employers - and the government, for that matter.</p>

5

<p>Even an unscrupulous IRS employee “could” use your SSN for unlawful purposes. However, like the IRS, financial aid offices safeguard the use of this information. Documents are shredded, SSN’s are given *** in place of the first 5 digits when possible, student ID’s are used as identifiers in place of SSN’s, etc. However, the SSN is definitely necessary, as it is used by the government to perform checks for aid eligibility (including a homeland security check), and the FAFSA is linked by SSN (which is why putting an incorrect SSN on a FAFSA is a major pain). Financial aid offices will not use the SSN to perform any type of credit check, and when an SSN is used for a credit check (Parent PLUS loan or grad PLUS loan), it is only used for that purpose.</p>