How many social security number combinations are there?
Nick Rogers
Dear someone,
If there is a known number, how many combinations of social security
numbers are there, and how many have been used? Are there combinations
like:
000-00-0002?????
Someone desperately wanting an answer,
Nick Rogers
NATHANIEL SILVER
There are 10^9 = 1,000,000,000 = 1 billion or one thousand million possible
combinations. There are 9 slots and 10 possible digits for each slot.
Nick Rogers <ni...@tanet.net> wrote in article
<01bd2de9$f05d05e0$2b5a03cf@default>...
Misha Kapushesky
Aside from the mathematics of it (which should really be aside from this
group...),
are all the SSN numbers possible? I want to meet the luck 123-45-6789 dude,
for instance. :)
Also, I wonder if the person with 314-15-9265 appreciates it?
--Misha
NATHANIEL SILVER wrote in message <6atv0f$o...@bgtnsc02.worldnet.att.net>...
ainsley
You can't have double zeros in the middle term. My school uses "dummy"
SSN for those who don't have 1 and so they use double zeros.
Also, they say that each state has its own 3-number set, but I doubt it
since there are probably more than a million people in each state.
--
ainsley
http://www.seas.upenn.edu/~ainsle17
If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on
America the mediocre educational performance that exists
today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war.
-- National Commission on Excellence in Education
Doug
Nick Rogers wrote:
>
> Dear someone,
>
> If there is a known number, how many combinations of social security
> numbers are there, and how many have been used? Are there combinations
> like:
>
> 000-00-0002?????
No.
According to the social security website:
http://www.ssa.gov/history/geocard.html
the first three numbers are used for a
state or states or territories (possibly more than one
state can use the same three digit prefix). Their website
shows the three numbers range from
001-003 for New Hampshire to a max of
756-763 for Tennessee.
Thus, at most 763 numbers are used for the first three digits.
The next six digits may be repeated for different states.
So, there are 763 combinations for the first three digits
times 10^6 combinations for the remaining six digits
which makes 763,000,000 possible combinations.
1990 US population was about 250,000,000 people, so we've
got not very long to go before we run out of numbers
(assuming the population doubles every x number of years).
********** BEGIN OF QUOTE **********
The SSN Numbering Scheme
000-00-0000
The nine-digit SSN is composed of three parts:
The first set of three digits is called the Area Number
The second set of two digits is called the Group Number
The final set of four digits is the Serial Number
The Area Number is assigned by the geographical region
in which the person was residing at the time he/she obtained
a number. Generally, numbers were assigned beginning in the
northeast and moving westward. So people on the east coast have
the lowest numbers and those on the west coast have the highest
numbers. (Complete list of the geographical number assignments.)
The remaining six digits in the number are more or less randomly
assigned and were organized to facilitate the early manual bookkeeping
operations associated with the creation of Social Security in the 1930s.
They have no siginificance beyond these internal bookkeeping procedures.
********** END OF QUOTE **********
NATHANIEL SILVER
Thank you for posting the website address.
You have shown at least 237,000,000 are unused.
Doug <d...@not.spam> wrote in article <34D4E0E5...@not.spam>...
William L. Bahn
But one important question that directly affects when we will "run out" of
numbers is whether numbers are reissued after a person is deceased. I would
suspect that there was no intention of doing this originally since the
logistics involved in the bookkeeping are not trivial whereas continually
assigning "virgin" numbers is easy. Also, there is always the risk of
assigning the same number to two living people or creating confusion
between the records of a living person and the deceased person that had the
number previously.
But we can expand the numbers initially just by using the remaining Area
Numbers. That alone would make another 237 million numbers available. And
you could probably restart issuing numbers from the beginning once you were
well past the point that all the recipients of the early numbers are dead -
say 200 years after a group of numbers was issued. That way there should be
no overlap of records and who a particular document applies to would be
unambiguous. Any other type of expansion will create all kinds of problems
with record keeping systems that are based on a 9-digit SSN - but, like the
phone numbering system, such an expansion will probably be required since,
even without significant population growth, reaching the point where 1
billion Americans, living and dead, have had social security numbers is
probably not very far off - and will probably occur before it makes sense
to start reissuing numbers.
NATHANIEL SILVER <mat...@worldnet.att.net> wrote in article
<6b2uml$a...@bgtnsc03.worldnet.att.net>...
Emile State
In article <01bd2f6b$4daf9280$0400a8c0@BAHN>, "William L. Bahn"
<ba...@pcisys.net> wrote:
But one important question that directly affects when we will "run out" of
numbers is whether numbers are reissued after a person is deceased.
=============================================================================
If Social Security Numbers are reissued, it will give new meaning to the
phrase "In a previous incarnation, I was ..." -:)
Chelsea Burba
numbers are reissued
Mike McCarty
In article <01bd2de9$f05d05e0$2b5a03cf@default>,
Nick Rogers <ni...@tanet.net> wrote:
)Dear someone,
)
) If there is a known number, how many combinations of social security
)numbers are there, and how many have been used? Are there combinations
)like:
)
)000-00-0002?????
)
)
)Someone desperately wanting an answer,
)Nick Rogers
This is not a valid number. The SSN has some informatio "encoded" in it,
such as checksum and year of birth.
Mike
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