Essay On Social Security Numbers

They are assigned to us at birth and used as one of the most valid forms of identification. The last four numbers are used on countless forms and are viewed as the most important digits because one can do so much with them. At this point though, we need to move to a new system, social security numbers are dangerously over-used. Instead of being a way for the government to identify you, they have become a way for everyone to find your personal information, businesses and government agencies alike. In the beginning they may have been an effective mode of identification, but in today’s society social security numbers are too easy to access to be any real protection. The Social Security Number was never meant to

A quote from Latanya Sweeney, in Johnathan Shaw’s article shows just how easy it is to get someone’s SSN; “We are entering a situation where a huge number of people could tell me just their date of birth and hometown, and I can predict their SSN”(Shaw). This is able to be done because Social Security Numbers were not assigned randomly when they really should have been. There is also the issue of the formula used to create a Social Security Number being posted on the internet for anyone to see, and since they are assigned at birth, even children can be affected by breaches

The original intent of the Social Security Number was just to identity workers who were earning benefits (Cherry). However, they are now widely used and local regulations tend to be weak and inconsistent. These weaknesses range from not providing individuals with the information that is required of them by the Privacy Act to an extreme incident in one state where the Department of Criminal Justice employs around 40,000 people and has their SSNs on their name tags for anyone to see (Cherry). The responsibility of protecting it is up to the individual employees, who had to tape over their SSNs to prevent prison inmates from being able to see