> Here’s an amazing fact: some individual > Social Security numbers are in use right now by up to 3,000 > people and it isn’t at all unusual for a borrowed number to > be used by 200-1,000 people at the same time . . . "
Well, that turned out a more nuanced answer than I expected. SSN's are nonrandom, but unique. Interestingly, that means, given a working SSN#, all the numbers nearby are working SSN#'s as well. In fact, technically, a random sequence of digits is 50% likely to be a working SSN#, actually of somebody born approximately at the same time and place as the first #. This argues fairly strongly that the number alone isn't an identity, and that the (number,name) is. In fact, that seems to be how businesses are setting up their databases. Thus making the ruling...right. _______________________________________________ Fun and Misc security discussion for OT posts. https://linuxbox.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/funsec Note: funsec is a public and open mailing list.
