• KamikazeRusher@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      32
      ·
      21 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.

      • Evotech@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        12
        ·
        15 hours ago

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

      • Croquette@sh.itjust.works
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        9
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        21 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.

        • CarbonBasedNPU@lemm.ee
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          5
          ·
          edit-2
          16 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.

          • Croquette@sh.itjust.works
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            3
            ·
            edit-2
            5 hours ago

            I am not sure if you are agreeing with me or not, but DOB and location where you were born are additional informations as I mentioned in my replie before.

            • CarbonBasedNPU@lemm.ee
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              1
              ·
              3 hours ago

              Oh yeah I agree that just getting a SSN is not a big issue itself but the fact that you can reverse engineer it from known information makes it not a very good security measure to prove identity.

    • KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      3
      ·
      19 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)