• Steve@communick.news
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    1 month ago

    No.
    The original concept had the first 3 digits identifying a regional office that issued the number.
    And no SSN has been issued with any group of digits having all 0’s

    Fore more info Wikipedia is good at this kind of stuff.

    • jqubed@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      I read stories from older university alumni from back when SSN served as student IDs where someone who issued gym uniforms or something like that would wow students by telling them where they were born when they’d tell him their SSN.

      • snooggums@lemmy.world
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        1 month ago

        I went to state college in the 90s and they posted test scores with SSNs. That is when I noticed that most of the students had one of two three digit prefixes. Thought it was based on when they were issued, looked up how SSNs worked and found out about the location pattern.

        This was before the credit industry hijacked the number and started treating it as a secret code, despite SSNs not being intended for anything other than Social Security.

      • sygnius@lemmy.world
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        1 month ago

        When I went to college early 2000’s, my SSN was printed directly on my student ID card. It was the unique ID that the university used for each student. Then like a year or two later, they required all the students to get new IDs without the SSN printed on them.

      • stoly@lemmy.world
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        1 month ago

        It wasn’t until the internet that people started to secure their social. It took the internet for it to be a thing.

        • jqubed@lemmy.world
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          1 month ago

          It could be used for identity theft in the pre-Internet days, but it was a lot more work to do (though also a good bit harder to catch)

      • bobs_monkey@lemm.ee
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        1 month ago

        Fun fact: whenever I’m in a 7-Eleven, I use whatever area code is for that area and then Jenny’s number, and it always brings up an account for their rewards program and saves me some money. Thanks, Jenny!

        • newbeni@lemmy.world
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          1 month ago

          I use it everywhere, I have got rewards all over the place, I don’t claim the ones I don’t know though because I feel like ‘Lynn’ with the same numer might need it more than me.

      • Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world
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        1 month ago

        …it’s not even enough numbers! You gotta use a REAL social security number, like 000-00-0001.

        Oh wait. We established that never existed. Ok. 000-00-0002.

        Nailed it!

  • HamSwagwich@showeq.com
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    1 month ago

    No, the first XXX and second XX are location and date identifiers. The last XXXX is your actual number.

    • Ultraviolet@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      That’s why giving out the last 4 digits isn’t safe. It’s trivial to derive the first 5 with public records and a lookup table.