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To date, less than half of the total possible SSNs have been used. They are not re-used at this time. (1) 1) I worked in a large hospital in medical informati

To date, less than half of the total possible SSNs have been used. They are not re-used at this time. (1) 1) I worked in a large hospital in medical information systems, and the edge cases of SSN included the (required) SSN for newborns and unidentified patients. For the former, we re-used the SSN of the mother, but added a suffix. (So in our database, it wasn't just a 9 digit integer, it was a >9 character string. I can't recall how long.) When the newborn got an SSN assigned, we updated it. For John/Jane Doe folks, we used something like all zeros or some such, with an 'auto-incrementing' character suffix. These were re-used.

delecti 9y ago
An estimated 40 million SSNs are associated with more than one person. https://www.pcworld.com/article/3004654/government/a-tale-of-two-women-same-birthday-same-social-security-number-same-big-data-mess.html https://www.pcworld.com/article/3004654/government/a-tale-of...
IncRnd 9y ago
ID Analytics did a study in 2010 that found 40 million out of 290 million SSNs were assigned to more than one person. The conclusion is that the odds of someone else having your SSN are roughly 1:6. Other highlights of the study include: 1) How many SSNs do you have? – 6.1 percent of Americans have at least two SSNs associated with their name. More than 100,000 Americans have five or more SSNs associated with their name. 2) Some SSNs are very popular – More than 15 percent of SSNs are associated with two or more people. More than 140,000 SSNs are associated with five or more people. Significantly, more than 27,000 SSNs are associated with 10 or more people.* http://www.idanalytics.com/blog/press-releases/20-million-americans-multiple-social-security-numbers-associated-name/ http://www.idanalytics.com/blog/press-releases/20-million-am...
- dragonwriter 9y ago
  > ID Analytics did a study in 2010 that found 40 million out of 290 million SSNs were assigned to more than one person. Since their count of duplication the other way was based on SSNs associated with names, I wonder if they made the same mistake for that direction (assuming name = person). People can both share identical names and have different names over their lifetime, so even if SSNs were 1:1 with people there would be SSNs associated with multiple names and names with multiple associated SSNs.
  - IncRnd 9y ago
    I doubt they did, based upon the news reporters reposting examples from the study for the last 7 years. In particular where the name is identical or almost the same, DOB is the same, State of Birth is the same, but the birth city or county differs. You read the name reference from the first sentence of a blog. The blog entry also mentions two of the main reasons, data entry errors and fraud.
- Diederich 9y ago
  Well cited, thank you! My information/recollection would be more correctly stated as 'the social security administration has handed out less than half of the one billion possible numbers'. I'm not too surprised that all kinds of zany things happen with such a relatively important, relatively scarce resource.
  - IncRnd 9y ago
    Apparently, SSNs are like all the rest... It's the Wild West.

delecti 9y ago

An estimated 40 million SSNs are associated with more than one person. https://www.pcworld.com/article/3004654/government/a-tale-of-two-women-same-birthday-same-social-security-number-same-big-data-mess.html https://www.pcworld.com/article/3004654/government/a-tale-of...

IncRnd 9y ago

ID Analytics did a study in 2010 that found 40 million out of 290 million SSNs were assigned to more than one person. The conclusion is that the odds of someone else having your SSN are roughly 1:6. Other highlights of the study include: 1) How many SSNs do you have? – 6.1 percent of Americans have at least two SSNs associated with their name. More than 100,000 Americans have five or more SSNs associated with their name. 2) Some SSNs are very popular – More than 15 percent of SSNs are associated with two or more people. More than 140,000 SSNs are associated with five or more people. Significantly, more than 27,000 SSNs are associated with 10 or more people.* http://www.idanalytics.com/blog/press-releases/20-million-americans-multiple-social-security-numbers-associated-name/ http://www.idanalytics.com/blog/press-releases/20-million-am...

dragonwriter 9y ago
> ID Analytics did a study in 2010 that found 40 million out of 290 million SSNs were assigned to more than one person. Since their count of duplication the other way was based on SSNs associated with names, I wonder if they made the same mistake for that direction (assuming name = person). People can both share identical names and have different names over their lifetime, so even if SSNs were 1:1 with people there would be SSNs associated with multiple names and names with multiple associated SSNs.
- IncRnd 9y ago
  I doubt they did, based upon the news reporters reposting examples from the study for the last 7 years. In particular where the name is identical or almost the same, DOB is the same, State of Birth is the same, but the birth city or county differs. You read the name reference from the first sentence of a blog. The blog entry also mentions two of the main reasons, data entry errors and fraud.
Diederich 9y ago
Well cited, thank you! My information/recollection would be more correctly stated as 'the social security administration has handed out less than half of the one billion possible numbers'. I'm not too surprised that all kinds of zany things happen with such a relatively important, relatively scarce resource.
- IncRnd 9y ago
  Apparently, SSNs are like all the rest... It's the Wild West.