Can Identity Thieves Guess Your Social Security Number?

Recent news stories suggest the social security number (SSN) has been ‘decoded’ and that this ‘discovery’ increases your risk of identity theft. It’s mostly hype and exaggeration. Still, there are precautions you can take.

Your social security number is often a gateway to your private life. Bank records, medical records, etc all rely on those magic nine digits. If your number is compromised, it’s much easier to get to your private life.

The Wall Street Journal reported “a new study says that mundane information like birth dates and hometowns on social-networking profiles can be used to accurately predict a user’s Social Security number, a key to identity theft.” According to the article, “researchers correctly guessed the first five digits of a person’s Social Security number about 40% of the time, just by knowing his or her hometown and birth date.”

However, Mark Lassiter, a Social Security representative, told the New York Times that, “[t]he suggestion that [the study] has cracked a code for predicting an SSN is a dramatic exaggeration.”

He’s right. The method of assigning SSNs is no secret. You can read all about it on the Social Security website. There’s no need to ‘decode’ the method because it’s been public for years.

• Since 1972 the first three digits of the SSN (the ‘area number’) are determined by the ZIP code of the mailing address. Usually (but not always) that will also be the individual’s home address.
• The next two digits, called the ‘group number’ are issued in a nonconsecutive order. The SSA publishes a monthly list that shows you the highest group number issued.
• People born after 1989 usually get their SSN shortly after birth. Therefore, the correlation between the first three numbers and birthplace will be high. The correlation between the next two numbers and the high group list will also be high.

Steve Morse, the architect of the Intel 8086 chip used in early computers, has had a Social Security number decoder on his family history website for at least a couple years. Plug in the first five digits of your SSN and it’ll tell you when and where it was issued. Using information freely available on the SSA website you can ‘reverse engineer’ it to come up with a good guess about what the first five digits are – especially in less populous states.

Try it yourself. If you have children (or grandchildren), see if you can use Morse’s decoder to figure out the first five digits of their SSN using just the state they were born in and when they were born. For example, I had a grandchild born earlier this year. My guess is that the first five digits of her SSN will be in one of 4 groups, 646-06, 647-06, 646-08 or 647-08 – probably the latter two because the former were issued in 2008-2009.

Lassiter, that spokesperson from Social Security, also says that beginning next year (or so), Social Security numbers will be assigned randomly. And the SSA folks have been saying for years now that using your SSN for identify purposes – like opening a bank account or getting a cell phone – is not a good idea.

So, what does all this mean for you?

When you set up a profile on a social networking site, if you worry about someone using your birth date or birthplace to steal your identify, don’t share it. Some sites (this is from Facebook) let you decide how much of your birth date you want others to see.

Of course, if you’re not going to publish it, why give it to Facebook at all?

Some sites (this is from LinkedIn), allow you to restrict who can see your birth year.

Most social networking sites have privacy options you can set. On Facebook, move your mouse over “Settings” on the top right of your screen.

When you click on ‘Privacy Settings’ you’ll then see a screen like this. Now you can start making changes to your privacy settings.

Notice there are separate pages for applications and searches.

When you click on an option box, you’ll see you can limit who can see different parts of your Facebook profile.

Click on “Customize…” and you can limit it even further by excluding some people and by limiting what people from different networks can see.

The same settings are available for pictures you post.

Also, you can control who can see your contact information.

Notice, in particular, the option to see your profile as someone else would see if. Use that to check just how much information you’ve made available to others.

Final Thoughts

It’s unfortunate that we must worry about things like this. Facebook has been a real boon to baby boomers like me who want to connect with friends from years gone by. If we all become scared of providing any personal information, it makes it that much harder to track down old friends. Of course, I’ve never been the victim of identity theft, so that’s easy for me to say.

Do you have experiences or thoughts you’d like to share? Leave a comment to let others know what you’re thinking.

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