Me too, me too. OK, so I’m a little late jumping on this story.
The tubes of the internet are abuzz with the news of the predictability of Social Security Numbers. Associate professor Alessandro Acquisti and Ralph Gross, a post-doctoral researcher have a presentation for Black Hat that will outline their research findings.
From Carnegie Mellon:
The predictability of Social Security numbers is an unexpected consequence of seemingly unrelated policies and technological developments that, in combination, make Social Security numbers obsolete for authentication purposes, according to Acquisti and Gross. Because many businesses use Social Security numbers as passwords or for other forms of authentication — a use not anticipated when Social Security was devised in the 1930s — the predictability of the numbers increases the risk of identity theft. ID theft cost Americans almost $50 billion in 2007 alone. The Social Security Administration could mitigate this vulnerability by assigning numbers to people based on a randomized scheme, but ultimately an alternative means of authenticating identities must be adopted, the authors conclude.
There was a time when I was a kid that my friends parents used to etch their SSN into the TV etc as a method to identify property if it were stolen.
Now, that could well be the least of the problems regarding SSNs.
For more read on.