cgpgrey patreon

Social Security Cards Explained

🕑 Added 2017-03-29 20:19:04 +0000 UTC

Comments

Dave Land

A video each quarter. That's all we ask.

[γδ(αμ)]

Woohoo a new CGP Grey video! I'm so happy, thank you! :)

James Sutherland

I remember something about how laminating your SS card invalidated it. I'm still not sure if that is true. Not that you ever use the actual card for anything much.

Brian Steiner

Literally the worst part is that the card isn't laminated and disintegrates over time.

msq

But PPS got some basic math security crafted in it <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_Public_Service_Number" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_Public_Service_Number</a>#Check_character

You're getting good at these ;)

Alan McD

Hah! Ireland does this too for its PPS number - there is no national identity scheme so the tax number became everyone's ID number.

Ken Blackman

Um you didn't mention that SSNs are recycled. When someone dies, that number goes back into the pool. This complicates things.

"This video brought to you by SquareSpace" but not from Patreon donors?

Leo Barlach

As someone who recently moved to America, I can say the way you use SSN is the craziest shit I have ever seen.

Jacob Mellard

Love being able to support this through patreon

DrWex

You didn't mention that SSNs are also not unique - that is, there are living people who have identical SSN and like any law of large numbers there are (or were) actual living people with the same name and same SSN. That may be less true now that things are computerized but back before that it was more common.