Another reason to put fraud alerts on your credit bureaus.

The interesting thing is that we are advised daily to be cautious about giving out our personal information but did you know that the banks make your information readily available to anyone that has access to their accounts.
When cashing a check at the issuing bank, BMO Harris Bank I was required to show two forms of Identification, give my social security number, place an index finger print on the face of the check and pay a $10.00 fee to them for cashing their clients check. Instead of going to my bank I went to this bank for convenience (it is in the same complex as my employer) and was aware of the fee but doing this saved me time. This was not a large or unusual check, it was a check written on a BMO Harris check for less than $400.00 and they were clearly able to check funds since it was their account and client.
I didn’t have a problem showing ID to authenticate that the name on the check matched my ID, however not only did the teller check my ID but wrote all of the information on the face of the check. She first asked me if I had ever lived in Milwaukee and that confused me so I asked why and she said she couldn’t find my name in her system. So I told her that I didn’t have an account at BMO Harris, just cashing a check. At that point she had not reviewed the check to see that the account holder and receiver were different people and after working in the banking industry one of the first things we did was put in the account number to determine if funds were available. So, after showing two forms of Identification, she asked for my social security number. When asked why she needed that she said that the federal government mandates this as part of their process to watch for international transactions or money laundering. Well, I didn’t bring money in; the withdrawal was being taken from their funds already brought in by someone else. There is a transaction report that is sent to the Feds when large or unusual deposits are made so shouldn’t that have been done with the deposit, not the withdrawal?
I did what she asked because this was just a normal transaction between two parties, nothing funny going on. However I did tell her that by putting all of my personal information on the face of the check as well as my finger print she has made it available to the account holder, so in essence, my identity information can be taken by the check writer just by obtaining a copy of the cancelled check from optical (easily available).
This is not a good system for us, so again, the system that says it is protecting us, is actually helping people we are supposedly being protected from.