Yes, leave off your SSN. And make sure to also leave off your name, address, and telephone number. Why would you want those sketchy folks at the so-called "American Association of Colleges of Osteopathic Medicine" to know who you are?
On second thought, don't fill out the application at all. Gotta put privacy first.
I don't think it's that unreasonable of a question. Honestly, in this day and age, you never know who is being careless with your data. From target to sony to home depot to even the NHS (with the recent ransomware attack originating undoubtedly from poor IT security practices), it's probably a good idea to be judicious about who has your information on their files.
To be clear, I'm not concerned about aacomas using my data in malicious ways. I'm concerned about them being hacked. I had that same reservation with a lot of the schools that I applied to. Their secondary apps often asked for my SSN on applications that seemed older than their school. And after the previous cycle, my exposure went from roughly my employer and my alma mater holding that information to roughly 15 schools. Schools that I cannot vet the IT practices of at all. Also keep in mind the type of data that the aacomas has. If they've just been filing their data without secure data destruction, we're talking about tens of thousands of future physician SSNs, names, birthdates, mother's maiden names, and childhood addresses. Give it seven years and this will be a gold mine of information.
And indeed on the topic of gross negligence, it's not unheard of for schools to accidentally release your information. I remember reading a thread about a month ago about a med student who had her information emailed out to the whole student class. You honestly can't do much about that. But I don't think it's appropriate to deride someone for wondering if they can minimize their potential to be put in that sort of a situation. Let's be real.., AACOMAS doesn't need your SSN. They don't do background checks. There's nothing that they do in particular that at first blush seems like it'd require your SSN. Especially so because you end up providing your SSN directly to your schools anyways.
That said, I supplied my SSN. I had reservations, but I supplied it. But at my doc's office, i opted to not supply it. I think one could flippantly say that I would trust them with my life but not my SSN, and indeed that's true. But I think those who have worked at private clinics or even larger clinics can probably attest to a lot of data negligence, while singing the praises of their clinical aptitude (as best a non-physician could determine, i suppose).
