Why You Should Never Email a Social Security Number
Posted May 23, 2016
External Article: Time (Fortune, MSN)
Highlight from the Time article:
Tax season is officially in the rear view, which means most of us are breathing a sigh of relief. But some of us remain anxious. It’s not about the chance of being audited (which is small, though terrifying), but rather about the fear that we’ll have our identity stolen. If you’re self-employed — whether an Uber driver, an Etsy artist, or something less 21st century (like a freelance journalist) — the companies that pay you are legally required to provide a 1099 to help you prepare your taxes. And with the explosion of the “sharing economy,” more people are getting these documents instead of W-2s, the tax form reserved for employees. Companies physically mail out 1099s, but because mistakes happen, tax deadlines are immovable, and the Internet is so convenient, some finance departments email these forms out instead… When emails are sent, they typically move from the software on the sending computer to servers called mail transfer agents. They will likely go through several of these nodes until they reach their recipient. Between these relays, emails are encrypted, but when they hit a server, they are unencrypted, read, and then re-encrypted before being sent along to the next node.
Milton Mueller, professor of public policy at the Georgia Institute of Technology, warns this process could be “imperfect” in terms of security. “The content of the messages is revealed to, and can be altered by, intermediate email relays,” he says.