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Can a Business for Any Reason Give Out My Ssn Number
My question involves criminal law for the state of: Washington
A washington state agency has submitted my identity credientials, including ssn, and other things, to businesses in Washington and other states.
Can they legally do this?
i understand perhaps law enforcement or other agencies could likely request or attain this information but they'd likely have it anyway. However, in my case, I have noticed a washington state agency has been sending out letters with my FULL social security number, and it is addressed to other people and not myself.
If this is not legal, what kind of action could I potentially take?
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Re: Can a Business for Any Reason Give Out My Ssn Number
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borris1212
My question involves criminal law for the state of: Washington
A washington state agency has submitted my identity credientials, including ssn, and other things, to businesses in Washington and other states.
Can they legally do this?
The short answer is that more information is needed to make any firm conclusion as to whether the agency is violating any federal or state. Which agency it is, what program of the agency is involved, and the details of why and to whom the agency is disclosing your SSN information matters. I'll give you very brief run down of the general legal landscape as it applies to government requirements for you to provide your SSN and disclosures of your SSN to others.
No federal law specifically prohibits a state or local government agency, or a private business, from providing your SSN to others. The federal Privacy Act of 1974 does regulate the circumstances in which a federal agency may disclose the private information it holds about you to others.
That Act also prohibits a federal, state, or local government agency from requiring you to disclose your SSN unless some federal law allows the agency to require it. State and local governments may also require the SSN if state and local law in existence in 1975 required it. Moreover, government agencies must tell you when asking for your SSN whether your disclosure to the agency of your SSN is mandatory or voluntary, and if it mandatory, it must cite the law that requires you to provide it. In addition, the government agency must tell you what it will do with your SSN. So if your SSN might be disclosed to others, the agency needs to put that in the notice it provides to you.
Note that other federal laws indirectly impact when government agencies and private persons may disclose your SSN information to third parties. For example, a health care provider subject to the privacy rules of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) is restricted from disclosing protected health information (PHI) to others without your consent except in specific circumstances listed in the Act and the Health and Human Services (HHS) regulations. Your SSN would be included in your PHI and thus the restrictions on disclosure of PHI would apply to your SSN information, too.
Thus under federal law it matters what agency this is and why it is disclosing your SSN to others.
Washington state law also places limits on when state agencies may require your SSN and when they may disclose it. But again, the details of the agency and the particular program involved matter, as does the details of the particular disclosures being made.
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It is with DCS, or Division of Child Support. Thanks to covid, their staffing, phones, email was unavailable so I went into arrears as they call it and a nastygram was sent to a fictitious employer I listed on my Facebook. I did pay it off recently, but I don't even work for this place. They got a hold of me, because DCS sent them all my sensitive information, including ssn, dob, addresses, all that stuff. Seems illegal to me, since I never even worked for this place. Can DCS really do this and is it legal? I imagine it might be, but I'm curious if I have any legal recourse here. They are just randomly sending out my information to any employer(s) they think I may work for without verification!
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Re: Can a Business for Any Reason Give Out My Ssn Number
Sounds like they only sent it to one employer - an employer that you yourself declared to the entire world via Facebook that you worked for. So this is actually your fault, because if you hadn't very publicly lied about who your employer was, this wouldn't have happened.
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Re: Can a Business for Any Reason Give Out My Ssn Number
Yes, DCS can release your SSN. How else would they make sure they are garnishing the correct employee?
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Oh, I didn't realize I had to tell the truth on these internets.
Have you ever considered a russian bride?
Might help with your poor attitude.
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Re: Can a Business for Any Reason Give Out My Ssn Number
Didn't say you had to tell the truth. But if you lie, you are responsible for the consequences of your lies.
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borris1212
Oh, I didn't realize I had to tell the truth on these internets.
Have you ever considered a russian bride?
Might help with your poor attitude.
Also, since you were not required to list an employer on facebook at all, it was a totally unnecessary lie.
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Re: Can a Business for Any Reason Give Out My Ssn Number
Still doesn't answer my question. Why don't you consider a mail order bride?
BTW Is there an ordinance, state, or federal law that says you must tell the truth on the internet?
How does someone like DCS determine a facebook profile is legitimate? What if it wasnt?
Your argument is about as stupid as <insert your favorite stupid noun here>
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Re: Can a Business for Any Reason Give Out My Ssn Number
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borris1212
Still doesn't answer my question. Why don't you consider a mail order bride?
BTW Is there an ordinance, state, or federal law that says you must tell the truth on the internet?
How does someone like DCS determine a facebook profile is legitimate? What if it wasnt?
Your argument is about as stupid as <insert your favorite stupid noun here>
1. I am a straight female who is happily married (30+ years so far!) to a wonderful man. So, considering a mail order bride is not something I'd waste any time doing.
2. There are no laws that require people to tell the truth on the internet - I never said there were such laws. However, people are always responsible for the consequences of what they say, whether it be truth, lies, on the internet, in person and/or in writing.
3. DCS doesn't legally have to determine whether or not FB profiles are legit. You post that you work for Employer X, and as far as they're concerned, you work for Employer X, until you tell them otherwise. (Of course if someone else posted that you work for Employer X, DCS would have an obligation to investigate this claim. But that's not what happened.) All perfectly legal.
4. What argument? I'm not arguing with you, all I'm doing is telling you the facts. (Just like the other responders here.)
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Re: Can a Business for Any Reason Give Out My Ssn Number
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eerelations
Of course if someone else posted that you work for Employer X, DCS would have an obligation to investigate this claim.
DCS would have no legal obligation to do any particular investigation of that claim. It probably would just shoot a garnishment order to that purported employer and let that company tell it whether the person is employed there or not.
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Taxing Matters
DCS would have no legal obligation to do any particular investigation of that claim. It probably would just shoot a garnishment order to that purported employer and let that company tell it whether the person is employed there or not.
OK so no obligation at all! That just strengthens my facts - thanks TM! :D
(This reminds me of my 30+ years in HR. I have seen loads of garnish orders - all of them with the person's name and SSN/SIN - and while most of them were for actual current employees, many were for either ex- or unknown employees. For these, I would just send the garnish order back with either a "stopped working here on X date" or "never heard of this person" response.)
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Pretty sure DCS cannot willy nilly send out my sensitive information to every business they think I might work for, be it something I set up, or something they think is mine.
It doesn't even have to be facebook. What if it was FakeBook where everything is fake?
Anyway, all I see is talk, deceit, and lies here. No facts or supporting information. RCW's, laws, regulations, etc are helpful. Arguing with me and calling me a liar is not helpful.
My name probably isn't borris. Maybe my cat is. Or my neighbors mongoose from 50 years ago. So is that a lie too? Why should I put my real information out on the internet where perverts, thieves and criminals can find it? Nope, never going to happen.
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Re: Can a Business for Any Reason Give Out My Ssn Number
There doesn't have to be a law giving them permission to provide your SSN in a garnishment. As long as there isn't a law prohibiting it, it's legal.
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cbg
There doesn't have to be a law giving them permission to provide your SSN in a garnishment. As long as there isn't a law prohibiting it, it's legal.
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Re: Can a Business for Any Reason Give Out My Ssn Number
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eerelations
OK so no obligation at all! That just strengthens my facts - thanks TM! :D
(This reminds me of my 30+ years in HR. I have seen loads of garnish orders - all of them with the person's name and SSN/SIN - and while most of them were for actual current employees, many were for either ex- or unknown employees. For these, I would just send the garnish order back with either a "stopped working here on X date" or "never heard of this person" response.)
A garnishment requires a court order and validates a debt. What DCS did was neither validated by a court nor ordered by a court to garnish my wages with "FakeCompany." If I set up a profile on Facebook for Samantha Brown and said she worked for Whirlpool and was in arrears with the child support order her ex-husband was granted..Well it is quite possible the very same thing could happen. There is no validation here by either DCS or Facebook that they have the correct Samatha Brown to send a child support garnishment order.
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cbg
There doesn't have to be a law giving them permission to provide your SSN in a garnishment. As long as there isn't a law prohibiting it, it's legal.
I'm sure there is a law, likely a broad law, that would prohibit this. There was enough information to open up credit cards and whatever else. Perhaps even identity theft, and may very well be DCS's fault because they would be at fault for sending it to the wrong person.
The only thing I can think of is that perhaps that is a law that makes them exempt, so that they can just send this sensitive information out to anybody they think matches the person they are looking for.
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Re: Can a Business for Any Reason Give Out My Ssn Number
They sent the sensitive information to an entity that you told them it was OK to send such information.
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borris1212
RCW's, laws, regulations, etc are helpful.
The problem here is that under our legal system everything is legal unless some law says it isn't. So there doesn't have to be a law saying what use the agency may make of your SSN for it to be able to do it. Instead, if the agency is restricted in its use of the SSN there would need to be a law that restricts the use. So I can't point you to any law that says the agency is allowed to do as there is no such law. It can do it unless some law says it can't. I pointed you earlier to some of the federal laws that regulate the use of SSNs by state and local governments. Washington state law does not place any restrictions on DCS use of the SSN when sending out garnishment orders to collect child support, so that use of your SSN is legal.
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borris1212
Pretty sure DCS cannot willy nilly send out my sensitive information to every business they think I might work for, be it something I set up, or something they think is mine.
It may certainly send out garnishment orders to businesses that it has some reason to think are employing you. Sending out a garnishment order to a business that you yourself claim to be employed by on your own social media is certainly not illegal for the agency to do. After all, if you are claiming to the world that you work there on your social media that gives the agency a reason to think you may work there. If you don't want that to happen then don't post claims on FB about where you work.
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Taxing Matters
The problem here is that under our legal system everything is legal unless some law says it isn't. So there doesn't have to be a law saying what use the agency may make of your SSN for it to be able to do it. Instead, if the agency is restricted in its use of the SSN there would need to be a law that restricts the use. So I can't point you to any law that says the agency is allowed to do as there is no such law. It can do it unless some law says it can't. I pointed you earlier to some of the federal laws that regulate the use of SSNs by state and local governments. Washington state law does not place any restrictions on DCS use of the SSN when sending out garnishment orders to collect child support, so that use of your SSN is legal.
It may certainly send out garnishment orders to businesses that it has some reason to think are employing you. Sending out a garnishment order to a business that you yourself claim to be employed by on your own social media is certainly not illegal for the agency to do. After all, if you are claiming to the world that you work there on your social media that gives the agency a reason to think you may work there. If you don't want that to happen then don't post claims on FB about where you work.
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Re: Can a Business for Any Reason Give Out My Ssn Number
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eerelations
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Are you a robot or a parrot?
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Taxing Matters
The problem here is that under our legal system everything is legal unless some law says it isn't. So there doesn't have to be a law saying what use the agency may make of your SSN for it to be able to do it. Instead, if the agency is restricted in its use of the SSN there would need to be a law that restricts the use. So I can't point you to any law that says the agency is allowed to do as there is no such law. It can do it unless some law says it can't. I pointed you earlier to some of the federal laws that regulate the use of SSNs by state and local governments. Washington state law does not place any restrictions on DCS use of the SSN when sending out garnishment orders to collect child support, so that use of your SSN is legal.
It may certainly send out garnishment orders to businesses that it has some reason to think are employing you. Sending out a garnishment order to a business that you yourself claim to be employed by on your own social media is certainly not illegal for the agency to do. After all, if you are claiming to the world that you work there on your social media that gives the agency a reason to think you may work there. If you don't want that to happen then don't post claims on FB about where you work.
Thanks - Your post makes sense to me. But the internet should not be used as a way to verify a persons employment. When you work for an employer, your employer sends out 941s, W2's, pay state, local, federal taxes where applicable. This is how you verify a place of employment. Not the internet, where you can say anything you want. Look at expertlaw. It doesn't even have moderators.
DCS can't verify the account they found on Facebook is even mine, which is troubling. I would not be the first person this has happened to. It is possible they have sent my information out to other people thinking it was me and I would never know. Alarming. There are some interesting laws out there, even for the internet. You can't post someones public information on the internet. That is against the law. Email's that have disclosures at the bottom can't be forwarded to other people without authorization.
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borris1212
You can't post someones public information on the internet. That is against the law.
Actually, there is no federal law that broadly prohibits that, and to my knowledge no state does either. Many Americans seem to think that their personal information is more protected under the law than it actually is. Of course laws that restrict certain kinds of disclosures (e.g. laws that prohibit medical facilities and health insurers from disclosing protected health information, laws that restrict financial institutions from making certain disclosures about customers) would apply to those disclosures being made on the internet just as they would to disclosures in other forms. In some circumstances you might be subject to civil liability for posting information on the internet that you have about someone, but that generally requires that you have a duty in the law to keep that information private in the first place. In a lot of contexts that duty does not exist and in those circumstances you are free to share the information you have. The privacy laws in this country are very much a patchwork of laws that apply in specific circumstances, so it can make it difficult to know what is protected and what is not. If you're not sure whether the disclosure you want to make is protected by some law then the prudent course of action is to not disclose it until you are sure.
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borris1212
Email's that have disclosures at the bottom can't be forwarded to other people without authorization.
Just because an e-mail has a statement like that does not necessarily obligate the recipient to keep the e-mail private. The details of the e-mail and the relationship between the sender and recipient matter. A lot of law firms smack a confidentiality statement on all the e-mails they send as a matter of practice but just because that statement is there may not obligate the recipient to honor that. Those details I mentioned matter.
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Re: Can a Business for Any Reason Give Out My Ssn Number
I dug a little deeper and found some USCS laws, federal laws I believe, that do prohibit these things but with exceptions. They are not broad, but specific. Posting anyone's identity, full name, etc, if they are under 18, is prohibited under federal law. Posting anyones information on the internet to cause harm, then there's cyberbullying, harassment, fall under similar categories of the USCS that does make it a crime to do such things.
Emails I'm not sure about, I skimmed quickly, but couldn't find anything specific enough.
So perhaps no law or broad law exists in my case with DCS since they their intent was not to cause personal harm (where I see it as somewhat similar to Identity Theft).
You need IBM's artificial intelligence big blue computer to even keep track of all this stuff to even know what is and is not a law, specific or broad. There's just too much
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Re: Can a Business for Any Reason Give Out My Ssn Number
Well, given that TM is a lawyer, I'm sure he's perfectly capable of keeping track of all this stuff.
Are you now saying that DCS posted your SSN etc. on the internet?
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eerelations
Well, given that TM is a lawyer, I'm sure he's perfectly capable of keeping track of all this stuff.
Are you now saying that DCS posted your SSN etc. on the internet?
Has TM given you authorization to tell everyone reading this thread that he is a lawyer, and a male?
No human could keep track of every law, that is why I mentioned IBM computing and AI. Maybe a group of lawyers. But anyway. TM's responses were helpful, most likely because of his education and degree in law.
DCS used the internet to obtain my information from social media accounts, without verifying the actual identity of the person(s) they found.
Did I ever say DCS posted my information on the internet?
Have you considered working for MSM, such as CNN or NBC?
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borris1212
So perhaps no law or broad law exists in my case with DCS since they their intent was not to cause personal harm (where I see it as somewhat similar to Identity Theft).
No, it's not identity theft. The state is not pretending to be you to commit some kind of fraud or other crime. Rather, what you fear is that the business receiving the garnishment order might somehow misuse it after it gets the order or might be careless in safeguarding your information which would allow someone to commit identity theft. If that were to happen you'd have a remedy against that business. But until then you've not suffered any harm from this and thus have nothing for which to sue. You cannot successfully sue for what might happen in the future.
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borris1212
You need IBM's artificial intelligence big blue computer to even keep track of all this stuff to even know what is and is not a law, specific or broad. There's just too much
You don't need that. What you do is consult a lawyer who practices in the area of privacy law (or whatever area of law you need help with). That's one of the things lawyers are there for.
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Taxing Matters
No, it's not identity theft. The state is not pretending to be you to commit some kind of fraud or other crime. Rather, what you fear is that the business receiving the garnishment order might somehow misuse it after it gets the order or might be careless in safeguarding your information which would allow someone to commit identity theft. If that were to happen you'd have a remedy against that business. But until then you've not suffered any harm from this and thus have nothing for which to sue. You cannot successfully sue for what might happen in the future.
Right. That's how I see it. Since this is sensitive information, there is potential for abuse, fraud, etc after being received by the wrong businesses, people, so I relate it to that, or rather, a form of identity theft. I most likely couldn't blame DCS unless I can find some other law that would put the blame on them for furnishing it to the wrong people. Ho hum.
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borris1212
Right. That's how I see it. Since this is sensitive information, there is potential for abuse, fraud, etc after being received by the wrong businesses, people, so I relate it to that, or rather, a form of identity theft. I most likely couldn't blame DCS unless I can find some other law that would put the blame on them for furnishing it to the wrong people. Ho hum.
DCS did nothing wrong. They were investigating where you worked so they could send a garnishment order to your employer. You posted on social where you were employed and they found that post. They took the post as being true and sent the relevant information to that employer. They didn't have to investigate if your post was true or false.
DCS is a state agency and their employees work for the state government. Under Washington law, these employees have qualified immunity from civil suit for doing their jobs according to law. It is only when an employee violates the law and/or is guilty of gross negligence in their duties that they can lose that immunity.
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RCW 9.46.212
Officers designated with police powers authorized to take action to prevent physical injury to person or substantial damage to property—Immunity from civil liability—Exception.
When physical injury to a person or substantial damage to property occurs, or is about to occur, within the presence of an officer of the commission designated with police powers pursuant to
RCW 9.46.210, the designated officer is authorized to take such action as is reasonably necessary to prevent physical injury to a person or substantial damage to property or prevent further injury to a person or further substantial damage to property. A designated officer shall be immune from civil liability for damages arising out of the action of the designated officer to prevent physical injury to a person or substantial damage to property or prevent further injury to a person or further substantial damage to property, unless it is shown that the designated officer acted with gross negligence or bad faith.
[ 2017 c 111 § 1.]
The state and its agencies have sovereign immunity from civil suit through the state tort claims act.
So you can continue to think that you can hold DCS accountable but, as they say, you are peeing up-wind.
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borris1212
A washington state agency has submitted my identity credientials, including ssn, and other things, to businesses in Washington and other states.
Can they legally do this?
Putting aside the fact that anything that has been done can be done, and assuming your intent was to inquire about the legality of what happened, the answer depends on what agency did this, what businesses the information was submitted to, and why it was done. It is certainly legal for DCS to do this with a company that you have publicly declared to be your employer.
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pg1067
Putting aside the fact that anything that has been done can be done, and assuming your intent was to inquire about the legality of what happened, the answer depends on what agency did this, what businesses the information was submitted to, and why it was done. It is certainly legal for DCS to do this with a company that you have publicly declared to be your employer.
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