Study: Social Security Numbers May Be Hackable

NPR.org, July 6, 2009 · Information experts say they can predict most of a person’s Social Security number if they know their name and place and date of birth.

The key here is SSNs assigned AFTER 1988. Crap, my kids were born after 1988.

They discovered that in one try, they could predict the first five digits of a person’s Social Security number 44 percent of the time if the person was born after 1988. That’s when the Social Security Administration started assigning numbers at or near a person’s date of birth. That practice ties the first five numbers more closely to a specific date. For people born earlier, the success rate was much lower because numbers were assigned at different times during a person’s life.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=106324377&ft=1&f=1001