• @[email protected]
    43•9 hours ago

    Small correction to an otherwise great explanation: SSNs are not recycled after death.

    **Q20:  *Are Social Security numbers reused after a person dies?*****A:  No. We do not reassign a Social Security number (SSN) after the number holder’s death. Even though we have issued over 453 million SSNs so far, and we assign about 5 and one-half million new numbers a year, the current numbering system will provide us with enough new numbers for several generations into the future with no changes in the numbering system.

    https://www.ssa.gov/history/hfaq.html

    • @[email protected]
      1•1 hour ago

      So they’ve issued almost half the possible numbers, current US population is actively using 1/3rd of them. I think unless there is a major drop in birth rates “several generations” is two. Either my great grandkids will be reusing dead people SSNs or there will be 10 digit numbers which is going to be a problem for any systems that coded it as char(9).

      • @[email protected]
        18•7 hours ago

        Nah. It’s worked for 50 years and if we get another 30 then it’s done its job well. Government is supposed to review and adjust things as time goes on and Social Security Numbers weren’t intended to uniquely identify citizens. They probably expected an overhaul to be done by 2020.

        They fact that we haven’t reworked portions of it and rely on SSNs to identify citizens shows that we haven’t had a forward-thinking Congress in the last 20 years at minimum.

      • @[email protected]
        11•7 hours ago

        The entire number is garbage. Change the last digit and you have randomly guessed a perfectly valid SSN.

        Less secure than a gift card

        • @[email protected]
          2•1 hour ago

          Well, it’s an identifier, your problem if that you have been using it as some kind of access key

        • @[email protected]
          5•7 hours ago

          You can guess a phone number as well by changing the last number, but that information has 0 value unless it is coupled with other informations.

          • @[email protected]English
            3•2 hours ago

            You can reverse engineer a good bit of an SSN if you just have someone’s birth date and where they were born.

      • KillingTimeItselfEnglish
        1•5 hours ago

        well tbf, the standard coming from computing is doubling the bits until it stops being a problem, or with ipv6 practically having more IPs than there are atoms in the entire planet of earth (i think i did the calculation a while ago, and it was like, most of the atoms in earth, so like, not quite, but for all intents and purposes, might as well be)