text: how do people use stolen social security to mess up our credit?   social security numbers are not supposed to be used for identification.  but in many instances that is all that is needed for a transaction...name, address, and ss number. once a transaction is made, it is easy to spiral the deception and before long, the person responsible is the one who lost the number.  there are steps to take, but most often it is a difficult procedure that may not be completely successful.