Comment on What happens when the US runs out of SSNs?

foggy@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

• Zacpod@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Really?

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  • foggy@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Nope.

    If you got your social Security number before 2011, your first three digits represent the geographical location you were born in. You share those three digits with each of your siblings who were born in the same geographical location before in 2011. Go ahead and ask them.

    If memory serves, and all we would really need to do is check a Wikipedia article, the middle two digits were done in some weird sequence, and then the last four were pseudo-random.

    So basically, any people receiving their social security number any multiple of 100 people apart from another (prior to 2011) in the same geographic location have a 1 in 10,000 chance of having identical social security numbers.

    Basically, if you live in a large city, you definitely have a few twinsies out there.

    This was changed in 2011, because of this, but it is still not a unique identifier. It’s just more random.

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    • yoevli@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      This generally isn’t true. The SSA makes an effort to assign a unique number to each individual. It’s happened before where two people have accidentally gotten the same SSN, but they try to avoid this.

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      • homicidalrobot@lemm.ee ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        An ID analytics study showed 40 million united states SSN had more than one name associated with them over a decade ago.

        risk.lexisnexis.com/…/LexisNexis-Risk-Solutions-S…

        Whitepaper from LexisNexis, corporate background check company, explaining avout SSN not being a unique or even really reliable identifier

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• bhamlin@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Thank you!

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