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Looks like his SSN is crossed out. I was cleaning out some junk in my house and found an old telephone directory from when I worked at a military contractor in
by drmpeg 8y ago
Looks like his SSN is crossed out. I was cleaning out some junk in my house and found an old telephone directory from when I worked at a military contractor in the 80's. It had everyones SSN on it. Times have changed.
- m12k 8y agoIn the meantime a whole bunch of organizations started accepting 'usernames' as passwords
- jrumbut 8y agoI don't think this should be voted down, the SSN was originally designed as a sort of username for tracking earnings, before anyone realized how important it would be to have a password. An SSN was not designed to be a unique secret identifier held by every individual. But we have used it that way, and built a house of cards on it. "In 1938, a leather factory in Lockport, New York attempted to capitalize on the excitement around the country’s newly-formed social insurance program by tucking duplicate Social Security cards into its wallets. Company vice president and treasurer Douglas Patterson thought it would be cute to use the actual Social Security number of his secretary, Hilda Schrader Whitcher. Real Social Security cards had just begun circulating the year before, so many Americans were confused. Even though the display card was marked "specimen" and sold at Woolworth’s, more than 40,000 people adopted Hilda’s number as their own. According to the Social Security Administration, no fewer than 12 people were still using their Woolworth’s-issued SSN in 1977." https://www.theverge.com/2012/9/26/3384416/social-security-numbers-national-ID-identity-theft-nstic https://www.theverge.com/2012/9/26/3384416/social-security-n...
- bsimpson 8y agoFor a long time, the last 4 digits of a SSN were the only ones with any entropy. The first 5 were determined by when and where you were issued an SSN (usually at the hospital when you were born). Suppose your number is 123-45-6789. If an attacker can uncover that you were born in Springfield in December 1989, they can deduce that the first 5 digits are likely 123-45. Now, there are only 9999 possibilities for what your full SSN might be. Moreover, the only random bits are routinely used by utility companies, hospitals, etc. as an oral password and written identifier. If someone reads or overhears that your last 4 are 6789 and knows when/where you were born, they have a frighteningly good chance of discovering your SSN.
- jrumbut 8y agoThat's true, also at this point a pretty substantial percentage of social security numbers have been leaked (perhaps all of them, not every hacking victim goes public).
- Spooky23 8y agoMy college posted test grades by ssn!
- astura 8y agoMy college ID was also SSN. IIRC My husband's first military ID had his SSN on it too.
- seanmcdirmid 8y agoMy first driver’s license had my SSN on it as my DL#.
- bdcravens 8y agoMine too (Oklahoma, 1998)
- burfog 8y agoThese days, they don't even post grades. This is a loss. The competition was good. Success brought respect, and failure brought shame. Everybody had an extra incentive to put in more effort.
- peter303 8y agoMy college ID card was the SSN. They did not have instant online credit like today.