Let’s see. After they have the first five, there are four left, which comes out to 9999 numbers to guess from. Let’s assume 900 guesses for each. 900/9999 comes out to .09 more or less. If I have 900 guesses I should be able to guess correctly in 9 percent of the cases. At 999, which is still less than the 1000 they allowed themselves, I should guess correctly just about 10 percent of the time.

And the best they could do with their fancy shmancy algorithms was 8.5 percent. I am SO unimpressed.

As to the SSANs, it used to be that when you wanted a SSAN (typically when you got your first job, at least it was in my case), you hied yourself off to the local SSA office with your birth certificate. There was a distinct formula that determined your SSAN.

The first three numbers were the SSA office’s particular designation. The next two numbers were the book number, and the four numbers after that were assigned this way:

They started at 0001, issued odd numbers up to 9999, then even numbers back down to 0002.

When they got finished with the book number (the fourth and fifth) they went to the next book in numerical order.

The SSA office in Alexandria, VA was 226, and my brother and I got our SSANs at the same time. His ends in 91, mine in 93. Other than that the numbers are the same because we were both in the same book.

Both of my children, though, were born in the same hospital two years apart (after 1988). Their numbers begin with 521 and 753. I fail to see how the people who did this analysis can use place of birth and year of birth to come up with those two numbers, which are just NOT that close together.