To be fair many SS cards were printed stating right on them they aren't for ID usage.

simoncion 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

Yep. Social Security numbers are not guaranteed to be unique, and for a very long time, were pretty easy to figure out if you knew roughly when a person was born and where.

"I know! We'll use this number that its issuing agency says is most definitely not to be used for identification purposes for identification purposes!" is real PHB thinking.

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Terr_ 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Right, I don't blame the SS administration, they knew what people shouldn't do and warned everyone about it... the problem was private companies were desperate for security-theater and were never punished as they built an entire grand opera-house of insecurity.

	▲	mahboi a day ago \| parent [-]
		What should the companies have used instead? Even the government identifies you by SSN, eg taxes or voter registration. They combine that with state ID often, but the only national ID is passport which not everyone has.