Most people can verify that their number coincides with the place where they obtained their number here. There is a general east to west pattern, although not perfect, in the assignment of the first three digits, with several exceptions. For example, New Hampshire is , Maine is and Hawaii is Places that fall even further out of the pattern include D. Virgin Islands , , , and Mississippi and Florida both received and after they exhausted their initial assignments.
The remaining digits of the social security number have little significance, other than as a unique identifier. The second two digits were initially designed to be the holder's date of birth, but this was quickly abandoned in place of using those as a group number to ensure the accuracy of the issuing process.
The last four digits are simply a serial number. Deliberate fraud is responsible for less than half of the 20 million names attached to multiple SSNs, but it is still a large percentage. I see many people who have a lot of Socials SSNs.
How many? ID Analytics says it has 3 million to 4 million names that have been used to commit identity fraud. Recently, Coggeshall decided to reverse his research.
Instead of looking for people connected to multiple SSNs, which is most useful for businesses, he looked at SSNs that are connected to multiple people, much more interesting to consumers.
In other words, how many people in the U. The answer: 40 million. That means nearly one in 7 SSN holders in the U. Please note, this is not an estimate conjured up from a sample. This is ID Analytics looking at its own data, picking out SSNs that have more than one name attached and building its own list.
We now know: The secret list of ID theft victims has 40 million people on it. Coggeshall said it's important to note that not every one of those consumers is hit with fraud. Many are on the list because of typographical errors. For example, if a company incorrectly enters an SSN and the number accidentally belongs to someone else, as explained above, the rightful holder of SSN No.
Coggeshall said he believes many of the 40 million are on the list as the result of such mistakes. But millions of those SSNs are being used to commit fraud. Some cases are obvious. More than , SSNs are associated with five or more people, and 27, are connected to 10 or more people, for example. The firm found that 5 million SSNs have been connected to three or more people.
In addition to criminals committing financial fraud, there's a more controversial reason that some consumers end up on this list: They are essentially sharing identities with undocumented workers who buy or borrow an SSN in order to fill out necessary paperwork to obtain employment.
The number of illegal immigrants using Americans' SSNs to obtain work is unknown, but a series of studies provides some hints. The Pew Hispanic Center estimates that there are about 12 million unauthorized immigrants in the United States. Those who are working are required to give a SSN to their employer. In , the IRS said it believes 6 million undocumented workers paid federal taxes.
And every year, according to the Social Security Administration, nearly 10 million workers pay taxes using the wrong SSN, ending up in what the agency calls a "no-match" situation.
Again, no study has been conducted to identify precisely how many of those can be attributed to mistakes and how many to undocumented immigrants.
In , the Social Security Administration sampled its records and determined that On the other hand, an earlier study by congressional investigators found the majority of filers on the no-match list worked in industries like restaurants and agriculture, where the presence of undocumented workers is high.
Workers who pay taxes using the wrong Social Security number are a boon to government tax revenues. Social Security taxes paid in such situations don't earn proper "wage credits," because the agency doesn't know whom to give credit to.
The funds are tracked in what's called the Earnings Suspense File, which has shown explosive growth this decade. Treasury during that six-year span.
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