Your SSN can be deduced from public data

>>It also turns out that some SSNs are easier to predict than others. Because of the way numbers are assigned, younger people and those born in less populated states are more at risk, Acquisti said. Before 1988, many people didn’t apply for an SSN until they left for college or got their first job. But thanks to an anti-fraud effort in 1988 called the “Enumeration at Birth” initiative, parents started applying for their child’s number at birth, making it much easier to predict based on a person’s birthday
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Phew, I'm in good shape, my parents didn't apply for mine until a year after my borther was born, did them both together... ours are teh same 'cept 1 digit.

The logic for the first 5 digits is no big secret, just based on location and date of birth.
 
hmm, I figured they had some randomizing in the final four digits. My twins were born in 2006, and we got their SSN's soon after. Even though we applied at the same time, their last 4 digits differ by about 1500.
 
mine is 409-92-2002.

how does that correllate to my birthdate and place?
 
More...

The authors point out that many credit card verification services, recognizing the challenges of data entry from illegible forms, may allow up to two digits of the SSN to be wrong, provided the date and place of birth are accurate. They often allow several failed verification attempts per IP address before blacklisting it. Given these numbers, the authors estimate that even a moderate-sized botnet of 10,000 machines could successfully obtain identity verifications for younger residents of West Virginia at a rate of 47 a minute.
Click to expand...

Ars
 
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