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> Somehow knowing that first boy born today will have an ID number of 120702450001X It's even worse. Only post-2011 IIRC births have an algoirthmic SSN. So eve

> Somehow knowing that first boy born today will have an ID number of 120702450001X It's even worse. Only post-2011 IIRC births have an algoirthmic SSN. So everyone over the age of 13 still has old fashioned sequential SSNs, where XXX-YY-ZZZZ is determined by 1) XXX is the code for the office that issues your card. Can be guessed precisely and accurately by knowing birth location. For example, I can guess what region of the US you were born in (or lived in when you immigrated) by the first digit. 0 or 1 is probably northeast. 4 or 5 is probably near Texas. 7 might be near Arkansas. Etc. 2) YY-ZZZZ is sequential by date! So by knowing just birth day, can be guessed to within a range. In practice, this means it's easy to guess YY alone, but harder to get all 4 digits of ZZZZ 3) For some stupid reason it got popular to print SSNs with all but the last four digits masked. This is horribly bad because those four are ACTUALLY THE MOST SECRET PART! It's the only part that might not be guessable. But since it's common to be more lax with securing them..... it is super easy to recover the full SSN if you find a piece of paper that says something like JOHN SMITH 123 Main St Alabama City, AL 76543 In ref acct: XXX-XX-1234 (2001-03-14) Dear Mr Smith, Your account is overdrawn. Have a nice day. Thinking of you, The Bank It also means if someone is personally known to me, even vaguely, I may be able to reconstruct their social seeing nothing but a scrap of paper that has just the last four, if I can guess approximately where and when they were born or first entered the US. If I'm in a situation where I can try several guesses, it's even easier.

5555624 2y ago
> 1) XXX is the code for the office that issues your card. Can be guessed precisely and accurately by knowing birth location. While the first sentence is true, the second is only true if you were born after the mid-1980s, when a Reagan-era tax reform was enacted. (It required a SSN when claiming dependents.) Prior to that, most people did not get a SSN until they got a job.
- nostrademons 2y ago
  I looked this up and while your first sentence is true, the second (non-parenthetical) sentence is only true if you did not require any of the other services that required a SSN. There's a list of those under "Exhibit 2" (about 2/3 of the way down the page) on the SSA's website: https://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/ssb/v69n2/v69n2p55.html https://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/ssb/v69n2/v69n2p55.html tl;dr: If you had a bank account, applied for a federal benefit, were on food stamps, applied for school lunch, or did any number of other financial or government transactions, you needed a SSN starting in the 1970s. That's enough of an incentive that many parents might've just applied at birth, figuring that their kid will eventually need it. Also everyone born 1968-1981 would've likely gotten one in 1986, when the change you mentioned about dependents was enacted, and then after 1988 they started being required for issuance of a birth certificate.
  - 5555624 2y ago
    I stand corrected. Thanks. I didn't bother to look it up, since I'm old and got mine when I started working. Although people born 1968-1981 were getting SSNs where they currently lived, which is not necessarily where they were born; which was the original point.
chankstein38 2y ago
When I was in school (almost 20 years ago) this came up because someone mentioned the first 6 digits of their SSN and they matched mine. Since then it's similarly bothered the hell out of me that the practice is to mask all but the last 4 of the SSN and that a lot of places require you to enter your last 4 of your SSN. I didn't know the reasons for the matches but them being my age and likely born in the same place as me made me realize those were identifiers and the last 4 were the unique bit.

5555624 2y ago

> 1) XXX is the code for the office that issues your card. Can be guessed precisely and accurately by knowing birth location. While the first sentence is true, the second is only true if you were born after the mid-1980s, when a Reagan-era tax reform was enacted. (It required a SSN when claiming dependents.) Prior to that, most people did not get a SSN until they got a job.

nostrademons 2y ago
I looked this up and while your first sentence is true, the second (non-parenthetical) sentence is only true if you did not require any of the other services that required a SSN. There's a list of those under "Exhibit 2" (about 2/3 of the way down the page) on the SSA's website: https://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/ssb/v69n2/v69n2p55.html https://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/ssb/v69n2/v69n2p55.html tl;dr: If you had a bank account, applied for a federal benefit, were on food stamps, applied for school lunch, or did any number of other financial or government transactions, you needed a SSN starting in the 1970s. That's enough of an incentive that many parents might've just applied at birth, figuring that their kid will eventually need it. Also everyone born 1968-1981 would've likely gotten one in 1986, when the change you mentioned about dependents was enacted, and then after 1988 they started being required for issuance of a birth certificate.
- 5555624 2y ago
  I stand corrected. Thanks. I didn't bother to look it up, since I'm old and got mine when I started working. Although people born 1968-1981 were getting SSNs where they currently lived, which is not necessarily where they were born; which was the original point.

chankstein38 2y ago

When I was in school (almost 20 years ago) this came up because someone mentioned the first 6 digits of their SSN and they matched mine. Since then it's similarly bothered the hell out of me that the practice is to mask all but the last 4 of the SSN and that a lot of places require you to enter your last 4 of your SSN. I didn't know the reasons for the matches but them being my age and likely born in the same place as me made me realize those were identifiers and the last 4 were the unique bit.