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Comment by xhkkffbf | Hacker News Reader

This kind of uncoordinated leaking is a deeper problem. Many share the last four digits of a SS#. Okay. But often the first five are easy to guess from the birthday and the birth state. The first few digits tell the state where the number was issued.

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Only for ones issued prior to 2011. While this encompasses any current adult it is something to keep note of.

The core problem is that we have an utterly idiotic system in which knowing a nine-digit number lets you do any harm whatsoever.

We have all the worst parts of a proper national ID system—tracking and data gathering by government and other large organizations isn’t hindered a bit, and we’re required to engage with our ad-hoc national ID system all the time for anything important—but none of the benefits.

Tons of suffering and wasted time, for no damn reason.

Hell a lot of people have a last 4 digit that is literally just their mothers birth year.

Last four of their SSN? That makes no sense, those digits are sequentially assigned at the issuing office.

Yes, last four. Don't ask me how I know.. Might be a "born on base" thing but it's no coincidence.

It is a coincidence. You have a 1-in-10000 chance of getting any 4 digit number and they assign 5.5M a year, so we can expect that 550 people get their mother's year of birth every year. You just happened to get 1961.

(Total guess but how cool would it be if I was right?)

I have a REALLY hard time believing that but I've never looked into it. Like you said, 550 people a year get it. I just happened to be in the 0.01%? I should be luckier, lol.

https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-odds-that-your-birthday-i...

It's a coincidence.

http://web.archive.org/web/20070203124309rn_1/www.cpsr.org/p...

Anyone alive today would be born between 1900 and 2023, right?

And their mothers, assuming they were between 13 and 50 when they gave birth, would therefore have been born between 1850 and 2010.

So that's 161 out of 9999 available last-4's (0000 is not used) that could possibly be someone's mother's birth year.

And then, of course, it has to be the right year within that space.

I am guessing this was something that happened to a few folks by chance and then was blown up by people who don't understand how many coincidences can occur across a population of millions.

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