09-24-2009, 06:19 AM
freeradical wrote:
[quote=JoeH]
[quote=Filliam H. Muffman]
SSN's are NOT unique numbers.
One of the reasons that credit companies sometimes will not tell you who is using your SSN is that it might just be a mistake on the name.
They are supposed to be unique, there have been very few duplicate numbers issued to two different individuals. So, sorry, your statement that they are not unique is mostly false. Also, none have been reissued once the original holder died. It will take several decades to exhaust the unused areas of the number sequence that remain.
Would you be willing to use SSN's as the primary key in a database table?
A number that you don't control.
Honestly?
That is something entirely different from being "unique", and is part of why they were not intended to be used as an ID number. That is why they are a bad idea for linking account reports by the credit agencies and for other related purposes. But still, distinct and unique except where errors were made in assigning numbers. So take your strawman and go home.
P.S. I do know the issues related to the way SS#'s are assigned that make them a bad choice for such things as a database primary key. One is that they are assigned semi-sequentially. In my own family I have run into a practical example of that since I and 6 brothers and sisters have SS#'s in sequence. That happened when my father applied for us at the same time in the '60's after the tax rules changed on interest income on guardian bank accounts. Without a SS# for the primary account names, us, he as guardian would have had to pay tax on interest earned.