4 ms·
For many people, the last 4 digits are the only ones that aren't easily deduced if you know the city a person was born in and the person's approximate birthdate
by bsimpson 10y ago
For many people, the last 4 digits are the only ones that aren't easily deduced if you know the city a person was born in and the person's approximate birthdate.
- etjossem 10y agoAnd for this reason, many SSN verifiers (banks, government agencies, etc) ask for the last 4 digits. Then they store them in a dusty database somewhere and forget about them until they have to verify identity again, or there's a major breach. That last part is the part that keeps me up at night.
- Iv 10y agoEven if they didn't, given the number of state-level administrations, I am sure I can get close to the 9999 attempts I need to brute force a code. I wonder how many automated attempts are possible.
- UnoriginalGuy 10y agoThey no longer issue SSNs that way. Since 2011 it is now completely random.
- cauterized 10y agoWhich is ever so helpful to those of us who are more than 5 years old.
- mynameisvlad 10y agoOr, y'know, arrived in the US after 2011. Plenty of people have had SSNs generated in the last 5 years that are older than 5, myself included.
- loeg 10y agoThat doesn't dispel the fears of lots of non-immigrants older than 5. :-)
- UnoriginalGuy 10y agoYou realise I know because I am one of those people? And trust me, I am over 5 years old (immigrant).
- cauterized 10y agoPoint is that there are hundreds of millions of us whose numbers are still guessable.