You can't get a new SSN as far as I know. What you can do is get a SSN pin, which will authenticate you in the case that your SSN has been leaked.
The damage that is done to your credit may not be undone so easily unless you take up a lawyer who knows what he's doing. Unfortunately, a lot of people are financially ruined for many years due to these kinds of attacks. Imagine not being able to buy a house, car, or even an apartment because of this.
How will damage have been done to your credit? If they buy tons of stuff before you manage to cancel all your cards, or apply for tons of loans in your name before you manage to shut everything down?
Isn't that the same as if my credit card is stolen? These things are insured and all the charges get reversed and I move on with my life.... obviously a pain in the butt, though I don't think life altering.
No, you pretty much don't know what you're talking about.
When people's identities get stolen, they typically don't know for years, as was the case with me. So someone opens up a line of credit under your name, spends it all, and it goes into collection for years, and then when it comes time for you to apply for a house because you are expecting a child, you can't because all of a sudden you have terrible credit. Or, you get denied jobs because you don't know about it, and when your employer checks your credit score, they reject you based on the fact you have several tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars in unpaid debt.
So the problem doesn't sound so much to be the actual theft, it's more-so that you might not find out until years after the fact when your credit it destroyed.
Also, I realize that bad credit is a pain in the butt, though let's be honest, there are many, many worse things that could happen to you or your loved ones.
The damage that is done to your credit may not be undone so easily unless you take up a lawyer who knows what he's doing. Unfortunately, a lot of people are financially ruined for many years due to these kinds of attacks. Imagine not being able to buy a house, car, or even an apartment because of this.