Just a weird thought that struck me. I’m not sure it counts as a ‘factual’ question, but I don’t see that it fits anywhere else. Sorry if a mod has to move the post.
Most everybody knows about “Jenny’s number” – from the song, a number that has apparently already been entered as a member number for all those ‘we need your phone number’ demands at commercial stores and that random people use when they don’t want/see the need for giving out their real number just because they bought a pack of batteries or whatever.
Is there a similar Social Security number? I’m thinking mostly it would be used by day laborers, perhaps especially undocumented aliens. If you don’t have a real SS number, but they want you to fill one in on your work papers, what do you do? Just put in any random 9 digits? Okay, the SS people will reject forms with that number eventually, but if the job is something like harvesting a crop, or selling Christmas trees for a couple weeks, or just doing pickup gardening or other labor for a day at a time – would it ever matter? (Or do those sorts of jobs not even ask for Soc. Security numbers – I’ve never been in position to work transitory jobs.)
I’m just imagining some IRS agent looking at a strange account. The holder of the account is working a zillion low wage jobs under a zillion different names in all 50 states at the same time, adding up maybe to a respectable amount of money.
Even better, imagine if YOU are the lucky SOB whose number somehow becomes the chosen one.
The most misused SSN of all time was (078-05-1120). In 1938, wallet manufacturer the E. H. Ferree company in Lockport, New York decided to promote its product by showing how a Social Security card would fit into its wallets. A sample card, used for display purposes, was inserted in each wallet.
Wow, fast answer! And neat that it happened, several times. I wonder if Mrs. Schrader got a big boost on how much her social security payments were later on?
A more recent example, if not as prolifically used, is Todd Davis’s number. Mr. Davis co-founded LifeLock, which was a service to prevent identity theft. He published his social security number to promote his confidence in the service. The number was repeatedly used by identity thieves (13 times as of 2010). The company was fined $12 million by the FTC because the service didn’t work as advertised. Later, the company was found in contempt of the settlement order and penalized another $100 million by the FTC for good measure.
Hey, that was the telephone number of a girlfriend I had in Liebenau in Hesse, Germany, in the 90s! (OK, I had to predial a 0).
Hallo, Sabine!
Disclaimer for good measure just in case: Sabine has moved house since then, we are no longer together, I lost sight of her, and numbers in Germany are longer now, so please DO NOT call there. Bad joke, jerk move.
Haven’t needed this for some time, but there were websites which helped you generate a plausible SS number to use in these situations. I’ve had several power-tripping managers demand my SS number, when they obviously had no business with it. I found a workable number to give all of them, assuming there was little danger to an actual holder of the number. If any of the control freaks tried to actually use it, they would contact me about it, and I could quiz them about their actual purpose.
I do a similar thing with marinas or airports demanding keys to my boat or plane. Just give them a plausible looking but useless key, with plans to deal with it should they actually try to use it. None of them, nor the control-freak managers have ever contacted me about these “pacifiers”.
There are some rules about what numbers are and aren’t allowed, so any random string might not work. However there are apparently no “check digits” like in credit cards, UPC codes, etc. where one or more digits are the result of a calculation performed on a subset of the other digits, so at least you wouldn’t have to math your way into a fake number.
