Social Security Numbers Gleaned From Public Data

For years, government officials have urged people to protect their Social Security numbers by giving out the nine-digit codes only when absolutely necessary. Now it turns out that all the caution in the world may not be enough: New research shows that Social Security numbers can be predicted from publicly available birth information with a surprising degree of accuracy.

By analyzing a public data set called the “Death Master File,” which contains SSNs and birth information for people who have died, computer scientists from Carnegie Mellon University discovered distinct patterns in how the numbers are assigned. In many cases, knowing the date and state of an individual’s birth was enough to predict a person’s SSN.