09-24-2009, 06:23 PM
RAMd®d wrote:
Get this through your head, they do not intentionally re-use numbers.
I can't tell if he is just yankin' your chain or is trying to split a red pubic hair.
He doesn't speak to intentions, just a couple of data points that certainly seem to be unintentional.
Personally, with regards to another post, I've never understood SSNs (the numbers) to be re-usable.
Certainly ne'er do wells have reused them, but I believe that violates the EULA.
Go back to his earlier post. He specifically states they have to be reusing numbers, such as this statement of his:
FHM wrote:
So how many unique numbers are there in any region... 999,999? How many times must a number be reused when 5,000,000 people live in that region? The combination of a name and SSN makes a unique identifier but not the SSN alone.
All his comments show a near total miscomprehension of the system used to assign numbers. Someone else posted they thought numbers from deceased persons were reused, and he seemed to buy into that as well. So he can point to a few cases of duplication, but to extrapolate from that they are re-using numbers because they need to is a major failing of logic, and a misunderstanding of the relatively simple math needed to show it was not necessary.
Now if he really wanted to know how numbers are assigned, he could read the wiki article. It does a fairly good job of condensing the information from the publications of the SSA. I first started to have to read through those back in the early '80's in connection with use of the numbers in computing. So I have a fairly good idea of how the system works and why it is so totally a bad ID number to use in a lot of database work. But the intent is for each to be unique, the failure rate is very low on that other than from fraudulent uses.