4 ms·
Was this is the US? There are benefits to having a national, public, unique ID # for each person and this is one of them; it reduces the number of 'they had th
by gota 8y ago
Was this is the US?
There are benefits to having a national, public, unique ID # for each person and this is one of them; it reduces the number of 'they had the same name' mistakes to nearly zero
- detaro 8y agoDoesn't a US employer have their employees social security number, which would fulfill exactly this role if people cared to look at it?
- newest_user_ 8y agoSocial security numbers are not unique, but combine them with a birthday and name, and it gets pretty close.
- neaden 8y agoSocial Security numbers are unique. They don't work as a great identifier because they can be mistyped, can be hard to verify, and people don't want to give them out too much.
- bb611 8y agoSSNs should be unique, the only exceptions are fraud or errors. According to the Social Security Administration: > At its inception, the SSN's only purpose was to uniquely identify U.S. workers, enabling employers to submit accurate reports of covered earnings for use in administering benefits under the new Social Security program. That is still the primary purpose for the SSN.
- anchpop 8y agoThey are not. SSNs can and have been reused
- tallanvor 8y agoThere have been cases where the same SSN was issued multiple times on accident, but they haven't been reused on purpose.
- filleduchaos 8y agoIsn't an SSN only 9 digits? Seems inevitable that you'll hit reuse (not now, but probably before the end or even middle of the century)
- gota 8y agoI'm not that knowledgeable but I thought SSN aren't public information and that they are not used throughout information systems to identify people because they are 'sensitive information'
- LeftTurnSignal 8y agoThey aren't public, but so many places use it as an identifier. It's kind of dumb for something so sensitive.