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Your Social Scurity Number can be predicted....

Discussion in 'Fred's House of Pancakes' started by apriusfan, Jul 6, 2009.

  1. apriusfan

    apriusfan New Member

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    Read it and wonder: Researchers say they can guess your SSN - The Red Tape Chronicles - MSNBC.com

    People born after 1988 appear to be the most at risk:


    Mods, if this needs to be moved to FHoPol, have at it. I am not trying to start a political fight; I am trying to draw attention to an identity security issue. But the thread may inevitably go political.
     
    #1 apriusfan, Jul 6, 2009
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  2. eagle33199

    eagle33199 Platinum Member

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    It's been known for a long time that the numbers aren't entirely random, but i didn't know it was this bad. I did know the first 3 were based on state, but to learn that the next two are so easily guessable is a little disturbing. Reducing the odds to 1/1000 makes it almost a trivial problem to solve with a computer. For example, lets say company X's website puts a 1-day ban on your IP address after 3 failed attempts. Well, to correctly guess someone's social security number with those odds, you would only need 333 IP addresses - and it's fairly easy to spoof or illegally obtain that many IP addresses (Do you have any idea how many home PC's are controlled by bot programs?)
     
    #2 eagle33199, Jul 7, 2009
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