Requiring Your Social Security Number Before an Offer to Hire
Identity Theft and Employers Bypassing Legal Background Checks
This is an extremely valid and an extremely important fair hiring practice risk deterrent which should have been mandated into law nationally years ago. Most businesses today use online applications and require you to enter your Social Security number. It is damaging to the individual in several ways. This allows employers to bypass state laws protecting an individual's right to written consent to a legal background check and a report of any findings on that check to be removed if inaccurate, as well as credit report findings of inaccuracy. Employers are using criminal websites like mugshots.com and about 90 other similar websites to base their hiring decisions on inaccurate information. These criminal websites extort you for sometimes thousands of dollars to remove the inaccurate information. This practice has the potential to multiply in serious proportions because those damaged by it have few practical options to fix it financially or legally because they do not have employment. If employers can not ask for your social security number until an offer of hire, you are protecting employees in several ways. They are not being discriminated against by inaccurate information, allowing employees to receive a copy of the report to fix errors or given an opportunity to explain something that happened in their past and how they have rehabilitated their lives. This also reduces crime and recidivism out of desperation. This ensures the employers are not bypassing laws to run a legal background check on potential employees. Protecting people from identity theft as you can create any false website you want online to collect personal information, with no security controls in place as the banking institutions, credit card companies are required by law to have in place. The fact that one has to fill out dozens of applications or more a month with this information just sitting out there has a Hugh potential to destroy lives. There are also many discrimination issues that this can violate concerning race, sex, age and ethnicity. This needs to be made FEDERAL LAW that no social security number can be required on applications until a written job offer is made first, which is contingent on whatever background check they need. Requiring your social security number on an application to be considered before an offer is made in itself is DISCRIMINATORY.
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