Can someone tell me if lenders and their legal departments can legally use my national insurance number to access information on me? as the one chasing me for a shotfall is asking for it on the I&E form.

thanks. Gary.

-- gary ausley (gaz@pc-x.co.uk), November 01, 2002

Answers

As far as I know, you should not be sharing your NI number with anyone other than the Inland Revenue or the NI contributions office.

Lenders might have needed NI numbers in the days of MIRAS but those days are long gone.

I'd suggest that you don't supply it. Well worth ringing your district tax office to see what they say about the need to keep your NI number confidential. If you get an answer, please share it with this board.

Lee

-- Lee (repossession@home-repo.org), November 01, 2002.

You are under no legal obligation to provide your NI number to anyone but government departments processing either a tax return, claim, status amendment or address change. They are not allowed to use an NI number to trace you [through governemnt departments], but I suspect (for reasons I cannot explain on this forum) there is an unregistered database being established here which records NI contributions made by debtors.It's a very easy way to calculate earned income as it's worked out on gross pay/self employed earnings. I rang the tax office dealing with my tax return from last year and they gave out loads of information without *really* checking who I was. I couldn't believe it.

-- Too scared to say (iwasduped@yahoo.com), November 01, 2002.

I believe that Experian has a database of NI numbers. This is used to identify name changes.

If you apply for a mortgage these days it still asks for for NI number, as does any life insurance, PEP or Bond.

Good Luck.

-- Harry (pearson_harry@hotmail.com), November 02, 2002.