Student Identity Theft
What is it and how can you avoid it?
Identity theft is becoming increasingly common and can result in significant damage to your personal and financial credibility and reputation, including for example, damage to financial credit history, difficulty in obtaining student educational or other loans, and poor credit that could impact future job opportunities. Once identity theft has occurred, the victim can spend an extensive amount of time correcting information and working out information problems with credit reporting agencies, creditors, banks and credit unions and other impacted agencies.
The California Student Aid Commission is taking steps to protect students from identity information theft. Like many other state and federal agencies, the Commission has used students’ Social Security Numbers (SSN) as a means of identifying and tracking student information for its various financial aid programs, including Cal Grants. The Commission has replaced the SSN with a unique student identification number for information tracking and sharing purposes. All mailed student correspondence and other written communications concerning students now contain the unique student identifier.
In addition, in its ongoing Internet information exchange with California’s postsecondary institutions, the Commission uses strong data encryption to protect student information that is transmitted electronically between institutions and the Commission.
It is important to note that the Commission will not release any information on Cal Grant program participants eighteen (18) years of age and older to third parties (other than to participating schools) without prior written consent. The Commission will never request any financial account information from a student.
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