Quick Guide: The Social Security Report

What is a Social Security Report?

The Social Security Report is the first step in a background investigation and provides an applicant’s previous addresses in order to help determine which locations should be searched for criminal records. A Social Security Report contains the same information as a credit report about names and addresses associated with a Social Security Number, but it does not include any of the financial information. The information that is compiled on the Social Security Report is reported from numerous financial databases when individuals apply for credit cards, submit change of address cards, or engages in any other credit-related transaction.

What does a Social Security Report Verify?

A Social Security Report can be used by employers and Employment Screening Services in many different ways:

• Verify that the SSN is associated with the person that is applying for the position.
• Verify addresses where the applicant has lived.  This will assist in ordering additional criminal reports in the states the person lived prior to his/her current address.
• Reveal aliases that have been associated with the SSN.
• Aid in cross-referencing with the application or consent form to any inconsistencies in the information supplied by the applicant

Social Security Report Discrepancies

If A Social Security Report comes back listed as a No Match Found, it will be flagged as a discrepancy in the Review Needed section.

Your first step will be to review the Social Security Number in the system, to ensure it was ordered correctly. You’ll do this by finding the applicant’s profile in the Report Management section of the system.

This number will be truncated. If what you can see is incorrect, please contact Customer Service at results@es2.com so that we can update the report for you.

If the number is correct, there are several reasons that the trace could have come back as a No Match Found:       

• The applicant is young and they do not have any financial/credit history
• If a person has never applied for credit
• The person is new to the country and just received a Social Security number

Please remember that the Social Security Report is completed using a database of names and addresses collected from financial resources and is not provided by any official government registry or the Social Security Administration.