Every individual over the age of eighteen in the United States has a credit score and a social security number which helps generate a credit history. In order to assess an individual's credit score, the lender needs the name of the person and their social security number to retrieve the credit score. Social security numbers rarely change, unless:

• Sequential numbers have been assigned to members of the same family and are causing problems
• More than one person has been assigned, or is using, the same number
• An individual has religious or cultural objections to certain numbers or digits in the original number
• A victim of identity theft continues to be disadvantaged by using the original number
• Situations of harassment, abuse, or life endangerment, including domestic violence, has occurred (http://ssa-custhelp.ssa.gov).
• Changing your social security number does not mean that you have a new identity and a clear credit score. When the federal government makes a social security number change, they have to share that with quite a few other federal and state agencies, including the IRS, child support agencies, state tax agencies, student loan companies, and entitlement programs (e.g., welfare). Law enforcement may have access to your name change; so may other institutions such as collection agencies, credit bureaus, banks, and other financial institutions.
• Here is some information on why a credit score is important.

A credit score can be as low as 300 and as high as 850. A person with a credit score of 720 or higher is typically deemed to be a low credit risk to lenders. A credit score depends on the amount of debt, credit lines already in route, number of open accounts, and number of missed payments and delinquent accounts. There are no specific strategies used to explain a person's credit score and that is why consumers can have one credit score at one credit bureau higher or lower than the score at the other credit bureau.

An individual's credit history and credit score is checked when an individual applies for a bank loan, mortgage, personal loan, cell phone, apartment, or anything that deals with burrowing money. The credit score determines whether or not the action is approved. For example, if a person has a low credit score, then a cell phone company might not issue them a contract unless they pay the required deposit for the service.In other cases if someone wants to purchase a new house or wants to refinance and if they have credit score below 620 it gets little tough to get a loan on the other hand if credit score is above 720 then customer gets the best rate and term.

Overall, credit score and history of an individual is very important, therefore, it is important to maintain it at all times.