4 ms·

US Social Security cards used to say "NOT FOR IDENTIFICATION" but I guess it's just too hard to pass up a good primary key.

dhosek 6y ago
When I was first enrolled at University of Illinois of Chicago in 1985, your SSN was your student ID. You could log in to the mainframe using your SSN in the username field (although thankfully, the actual user ID was a sequentially assigned five-digit number and not the SSN. I was U10754). I think around 1986 or 1987, universities were instructed to stop using SSNs as student ID numbers.
- toast0 6y ago
  > I think around 1986 or 1987, universities were instructed to stop using SSNs as student ID numbers. And around 2005 they actually mostly stopped.
- macintux 6y ago
  In the early 90s I had a professor who passed around a sheet of paper for us the first day of class to write down our names and our SSN. I had to point out to him after class that was a rather boneheaded idea (I'm sure I was a bit more polite than that).
- Spooky23 6y ago
  Lol. My SUNY school addressed this by suppressing the first three numbers. Considering that about 30% of the student body seemed to be from Islip, it was pretty trivial to guess the first three.
- quesera 6y ago
  The State (Commonwealth!) of Massachusetts used your SSN for your Driver License number, as recently as the mid-1990s. Every time you had to show ID anywhere, you were giving your SSN away.
  - michaelmrose 6y ago
    When looking up the details of the incarceration of a POS we had locked up in the state of Washington we discovered his electronically available prior warrants show his entire SSN NOW.
- sgerenser 6y ago
  My university (back in the early 2000s) used your initials and last 4 of SSN as your student ID number. I think they finally stopped a year or two after I graduated.
marcosdumay 6y ago
Hum... When normal people say "identification" the almost always mean what we understand by "authentication"¹. They main intended use of a social security number is as a key, that's the intended use 99.(some more 9s)% of the times a government gives a number to somebody. 1 - And when they say "authentication", they almost always mean what we understand by "non-repudiation".

dhosek 6y ago

When I was first enrolled at University of Illinois of Chicago in 1985, your SSN was your student ID. You could log in to the mainframe using your SSN in the username field (although thankfully, the actual user ID was a sequentially assigned five-digit number and not the SSN. I was U10754). I think around 1986 or 1987, universities were instructed to stop using SSNs as student ID numbers.

toast0 6y ago
> I think around 1986 or 1987, universities were instructed to stop using SSNs as student ID numbers. And around 2005 they actually mostly stopped.
macintux 6y ago
In the early 90s I had a professor who passed around a sheet of paper for us the first day of class to write down our names and our SSN. I had to point out to him after class that was a rather boneheaded idea (I'm sure I was a bit more polite than that).
Spooky23 6y ago
Lol. My SUNY school addressed this by suppressing the first three numbers. Considering that about 30% of the student body seemed to be from Islip, it was pretty trivial to guess the first three.
quesera 6y ago
The State (Commonwealth!) of Massachusetts used your SSN for your Driver License number, as recently as the mid-1990s. Every time you had to show ID anywhere, you were giving your SSN away.
- michaelmrose 6y ago
  When looking up the details of the incarceration of a POS we had locked up in the state of Washington we discovered his electronically available prior warrants show his entire SSN NOW.
sgerenser 6y ago
My university (back in the early 2000s) used your initials and last 4 of SSN as your student ID number. I think they finally stopped a year or two after I graduated.

marcosdumay 6y ago

Hum... When normal people say "identification" the almost always mean what we understand by "authentication"¹. They main intended use of a social security number is as a key, that's the intended use 99.(some more 9s)% of the times a government gives a number to somebody. 1 - And when they say "authentication", they almost always mean what we understand by "non-repudiation".