Why YSK: If you are a US Resident, don’t lose your Social Security card more than 10 times, or else you might need to respawn 💀
Excerpt from Wikipedia:
In accordance with §7213 of the 9/11 Commission Implementation Act of 2004 and 20 CFR 422.103, the number of replacement Social Security cards per person is generally limited to three per calendar year and ten in a lifetime.
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Shiiiiiet I’m like 2-3 away probably lol
Social security numbers need to be phased out. Such a ridiculous and outdated system.
It’s important to remember social security numbers were created ONLY to track Social Security benefits. And the Social Security Bureau continually advised everyone to please not use them for a way to teach other things, but no one listened so here we are. The Bureau readily admits it’s not designed to do anything else . https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19697506/#%3A~%3Atext=Abstract%2Cas+a+nearly+universal+identifier.
But they’re shit even for that. Part of tracking Social Security benefits is tracking taxes paid to Social Security. Unlike other forms of ID, like credit cards, SSNs have no check digits or other means of error prevention. Take a valid SSN. Change on of the digits. That new number is also a valid SSN. Any random 9-digit number can be a valid SSN.
What this means is that all it takes to screw up any form with an SSN on it is to have illegible handwriting on a single one of the digits. You make a single easy error on an employment form, and now your SS taxes are registered under the wrong number.
I’m also skeptical of the Social Security Bureau’s stance on insisting it wasn’t intended as a broad identifier. OF COURSE it was going to be used as an identifier! It’s the only single ID number that the federal government gives out to everyone. OF COURSE it’s going to be used for that. Such a number is of such obvious and great utility that of course it was going to be used for broader purposes. If you create something of such obvious utility, you have an obligation to make sure it’s made well.
It also really strains credulity when Social Security has an entire system dedicated to allowing third parties to verify SSNs. It’s literally called The Social Security Verification Service.
If the Social Security Administration really didn’t want SSNs being used for purposes other than Social Security, then they could have easily prevented them for being used for such purposes. Think about how your SSN works with your bank. You apply for a bank account. They ask you your SSN. You tell them. But how do they know that this information is accurate? Your bank contacts Social Security! The bank has a form you sign that gives permission for them to as the Social Security Bureau to confirm your SSN. And the Social Security office happily obliges.
The Social Security Administration doesn’t just tolerate the use of SSNs for third party uses. It actively facilitates such third party uses of SSNs.
You’re noticing all the things that have happened since the Bureau have up trying to prevent the usage. Remember there was no way to electronically do anything like this for decades after the SSN was created. And the Bureau has no authority to enforce any kind of prevention, but was forced to support it’s usage as a result of the Federal government lack of action to come up with any other system for the last 90 years.
Any random 9-digit number can be a valid SSN.
Not true - there are whole ranges that specifically aren’t in use (mostly specific values for the first three digits that are intentionally not used). Outside those ranges though, yeah, basically any 9 digit number. Add one to the last digit of your SSN and if you were born before 2014 you likely get someone born in the same hospital on the same day.
Yup. It’s ridiculous that it’s snowballed into this precious secret that you have to give to most employers 🤦🏻
we should just give everyone a uuid.
I take 1
Right? Children should be minted as on the block chain. They’re basically NFTs.
Huh, at a glance, that might actually be a good use for the blockchain.
Blockchain is a ledger, not a database.
DNA already has blockchain vibes. We could unravel the … transactions if we understood all the code.
DNA
transactions
( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
Why? Because the system itself is arcane and could be done smarter? Or because the government has no business being able to distinguish between people with the same name? I need to understand this before going into a discussion with you.
Or because the government has no business being able to distinguish between people with the same name?
Seems like an objectively terrible approach, considering people with the same name have gotten the same SSN before.
Such an ID would have to be unique.
That would fall into the first category… Also, wtf? How can the same SSN be issued twice?!? It’s a frigging serial number, not a condom at a whore house.
Roughly 1/7 SSNs are issued twice. SSNs are recycled, used multiple times, all that good stuff.
This is why it’s incredibly dangerous when people assume they are unique.
Sometimes there’s a limited supply of condoms and an endless need ….
SSN is 9 digits long, one billion possibilities. While that sounds like a lot, that’s less than triple the number of Americans currently alive, and there’s a continuous progression of new births and older people passing requiring a continuous flow of new SSNs being used. In an 80 year average lifespan where you are holding an SSN,that continuous usage goes through the available numbers all too quickly.
Even worse, numbers used to be allocated by area, meaning there were a lot of wasted numbers where growth didn’t match expectations, and corresponding shortages where numbers needed to be re-used because of local scarcity
Like you, I am waiting to see what asinine response they give.
Wasn’t going to bother answering because it was an asinine question. Obviously the first one.
so if you want to ruin someones life, just steal their social security card 10 times?
I mean… you could just falsely accuse them of being a terrorist. 🤷♂️
You could just falsely accuse them of being an immigrant.
It’s a legit fear I have going to a protest as a Latino. They say don’t take IDs with you to protests. Bruh, I’m taking my US Passport so I don’t get deported to Guantanamo. No guarantee that will work either.
They say don’t take IDs with you to protests.
The point is don’t lose it in the protest so it gets you identified.
But if you are an at-risk minority group, of course you bring it. Better risk getting identified than getting (unconstitutionally) deported.
Your SS card has been redeemed, you have 8 protests remaining. Enroll in citizenship plus for $999,999,999.99 and get 100 lifetime SS card replacements, plus a month of Tesla+ on us!
After that they come round and tattoo it onto your forehead.
I had to replace mine once. Put it in a safer spot and haven’t had to move it since. I can’t imagine what someone is doing where they’d need to replace a social security card 10 times.
I don’t get it. Is a social secuirty thingy the same as what National ID’s are for in other countries?
Yes, but in that typically bonkers American way you also have to keep it secret (so nobody can steal your identity), while at the same time revealing it to every Tom, Dick and Harry every time you have to prove your identity.
If you know their name and their location I believe you can make a very well educated guess at their social security number too
I assume most people’s social security numbers are out on the dark web nowadays.
Salt typhoon leak a few months ago released 60 million of them iirc.
Yesn’t.
In a nutshell, Social Security is a government run pension/retirement savings system. With a few exceptions you can look up on your own if you’re curious, every American worker pays into the social security system as a tax on income. Each person in the system, so basically everyone working a job in the US, gets an account number, their Social Security Number.
For awhile after the system started, you’d get your SSN when you got your first job. At some point, they introduced a tax credit for parents with children, if you had a child you could deduct them on your taxes. People started claiming they had more kids than they did to pay less taxes. Sure, let’s just tell the government we have 12 kids, they won’t know we only have 5. The solution to this problem was to require the children being claimed had social security numbers. This had two effects: 1. it got rid of those “paper children,” and 2. Signing up for social security and getting a social security number is part of being born; every American now has a serial number, issued on a card.
The kind of people who are ruining our nation right now are opposed to a national ID system because they hate being part of a functioning society. So we don’t have a national ID card the way many nations do. State governments issue a number of IDs of various types, the de facto standard for identification in the US is a driver’s license. The vast majority of Americans have one. But, not all. The only unique number common to (practically) ALL Americans is a Social Security Number.
Numbers like credit card numbers or sanely designed ID systems have built-in checksums, not every number that fits the regex for a Visa card number is a valid Visa card number. A social security number doesn’t have that; it wasn’t intended as an ID number, it’s an account number, you can tell when and where it was issued by looking at it because it’s a serial number. And because most Americans younger than the president were issued their numbers at birth, you can guess a lot of their number based on where and when they were born. The last four digits are a simple serial number…and often used by banks and such as a second factor. “Okay, just tell me your date of birth and the last four of your social.” the bank teller will ask you out loud.
It’s something we’re gonna have to fix after the war.
Plus those drivers licenses …. Are issued by states and until recently had no real value as a national id. Now we are trying to phase in “Real ID” where those drivers licenses have to meet national standards and be verifiable as a national ID. It hasn’t gone well and keeps getting pushed back, so we’ll see if it really happens this time.
As the forcing function they are requiring Real ID to fly even within the country. Soon you will no longer be able to use a normal drivers license.
But my state screwed up where I paid extra to get a Real ID compliant license but after a mess of lost paperwork they issued a standard license. So I’m not Real ID compliant and they say I can’t get one until my next renewal in a couple years, which means I soon can’t use that as ID to fly. To add to this mess, that means my only alternative is using a passport, even for local flights. And many Americans don’t have passports.
It’s not supposed to be an identifier, but since it’s the only nationally-assigned designation all citizens get it’s treated like one.
Which is stupid. It’s incredibly insecure, vitally important, leaked to every bad actor on the planet already, and unchangeable when it gets compromised (which it has been).
Sounds fitting for a country run by Trump of all people.
Its been an issue long before he came around
Yes, sort of, but in a stupid way. The number is treated as a unique identifier of a person, but you don’t carry it around since it’s so insecure.
Why not just use the passport number? Or does your passport have the SS number?
Not everyone has a passport and you use SSN to get one. Passports are relatively rare for a lot of people in the US.
Interesting. In europe it’s made simpler because we have the same number on our ID and our Passport. And in many european countries that is what’s used for identification from the government. And for all the welfare / bank and stuff.
In the US nobody would want an official single identifier across multiple services and agencies like that, even though our SSN is essentially used that way. People don’t want to be tracked and linked by a single identifier, arguably because it would be abused by commercial and/or government interests, and then there’s the conspiracy nuts that would come up with who knows what reasons, and religious nuts that view a unique identifier as a “mark of the beast” or whatever.
People a fucking weird over here.
I’m not driving I’m simply traveling!
Not everyone has a passport.
Why. The hell. Are we supposed to keep sacred a piece of paper that only has 9 precious numbers we can’t choose, but that will permanently identify us, that will deteriorate over time, we’re not supposed to laminate or protect it, and we only have limited replacements!? So dumb…
You can use plastic sleeve covers, just nothing permanent like laminate. You can’t scan it with laminate.
Got rained on when I went to a new job about 10 years ago, had it in my wallet so they could copy it for new hire bs. The colors bled and the blue stained other parts of the card. I never got it replaced but seriously, it isn’t even as durable as a dollar bill.
That part is actually by design. The thought being that if you lose it that it will be more likely to be naturally destroyed than have the time to be found by someone with nefarious aims.
The 10 max rule (which allows for exceptions) was from 2004 when presumably they assumed most people did not have reason to be walking around with theirs all the time. I don’t know why it was put in place, other than a cursory search seeming to be antiterrorism bs, but 10 is kinda a lot for a document you generally don’t need to carry with you and don’t need very often in general. Probably super difficult for people that struggle with housing though.
It’s fucking absurd. It is the flimsiest piece of paper imaginable too (unless it’s been changed recently).
Also, I’m pretty sure you have to pay a fee to replace it, so why the fuck do they limit it?
For decades i’ve had mine in perfect shape. I don’t understand what’s so hard in terms of protecting the original.
If your house is on fire then sure, you need a replacement. If your house catches fire, gets drowned by a biblical flood, has an earthquake swallow it, a volcano erupts underneath it, and has a meteorite strike it - all at different times, all destroying your SS card, you can still get replacements.
10 is enough. If someone is going to lose it more than that they should probably not keep one. It’s not like you need it for anything, you just need the number. A passport or state real ID covers identification.
“Mentally ill people shouldn’t be American citizens anyways.”
Or maybe just “Scatterbrained people…”
Okay, I hear what you’re saying… when was the last time you had to present a physical copy of your SS card and NOTHING else could be used as a substitute?
Requesting your W2s from the IRS requires you to have the card, or 1 of 10 other documents that usually have xxx-xx as the first 5 of the number.
As an aside, the first 5 can be determined if you know what state and year someone was born in.
Rarely but it’s relevant because ICE thugs are abducting people off the street. I get the fear.
Murrica
You can laminate it. New ones don’t say not to, mine is and have never even been asked about it.
I’ve got a locked file cabinet with folders for all my important documents like social security card, birth certificate, the degrees I don’t have hanging on the wall, lease contracts, stuff like that. Also a shitton of appliance manuals
That certainly doesn’t sound like the first thing to get utterly torched in a house fire.
I plan on burning my house down fewer than ten times in my life
I actually keep them (minus appliance stuff because I just find them online and download the pdf and never found them that important) in a fireproof safe. Honestly, it’s not a lot of stuff, and so the safe is really small. It didn’t cost much at all but you do have to replace it like every 10ish years since fireproof doesn’t last forever.
…this. Let’s have a talk about basic security and prevention, because it’s important.
First of all, I wanted to factor in prices, but according to this webpage, the replacement social security cards should be free. However. I wouldn’t know from personal experience, and cannot verify.
By a combination of a small miracle, some neglect, and then some careful choices to safeguard it…I still have my original SS card. I would recommend getting a little passport case or something, and some metal plates or hard plastic cards to keep the SS card from bends/creases. Then you can place it in a blaze barrier document bag like this one. No, you don’t need this exact one, all I did was type in ‘blaze barrier document bag’ into Amazon because that’s the branding on mine. I just looked at it. $20 bag, goes a long way keeping that card safe & unmolested.
Those bags aren’t entirely fireproof & it’s only one layer; they’ve done extreme tests & the contents can (possibly) become slightly torched. That’s where you can buy a shitty 90s fireproof lockbox for next to nothing secondhand, I know I’ve got at least 2 & I think one was $5 & the other $10. Arguably more effective than the bag, my friend’s house burned down but he had a shitty 90s fireproof lockbox & it kept his personal documents & pictures of his deceased mother fully intact.
We’re not looking to confound master thieves with a safe, we’re just looking to safeguard SS cards and/or pics of dead moms. 👍 FB Marketplace, I found ones for $10-15 in IL, KY, MO. Everybody has these shitty 90s fireproof lockboxes. No excuse. Put the document(s) in the bag, and the bag in the shitty 90s fireproof lockbox. Double protection.Also noteworthy: fireproof concrete lined filing cabinets (I recommend FireKing), sometimes you can find them cheap used because they’re a heavy nuisance item. If you have a basement, put the fireproof/resistant stuff in your basement or ground floor. It’s more stable there & should survive.
Then for those interested in the eccentric & the extreme, dive down the rabbithole known as Starlite fireproof coatings. While we may never know the exact formulation of this wonder material as it was presented, it turns out Maurice Ward merely rediscovered the lost art of intumescent materials that release layers of carbon char when exposed to heat. You can buy intumescent paint like this one & it’ll essentially fireproof any material you paint!
So in conclusion, yes, you can buy fire resistant filing cabinets. Even “fireproof” ones. And safes, and lockboxes, and document bags, and even intumescent paint. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
Is it not the same thing as Canadian SIN?
I don’t understand how can you lose it? It’s just a number. If you forget it, you can login into CRA (Canadian IRS) website and see it there and you can print it if you want for some reason.
My last job required the actual physical card for some reason 🤔
That’s what I always wondered: the card is a simple printout with no security features, no real verification, no biometrics. In the current day especially, it would be trivial to print one indistinguishable from original. They have no value as an ID card, yet are somehow treated as if they were.
The SS card doesn’t make sense as anything other than a reminder of your number, but it’s sometime treated as a form of ID. It just doesn’t make sense
Its a number but also on a physical card. The physical card is often used as one form of proving you are who you say you are (like getting a license, passport, etc).
Avoid paying taxes with this one weird trick
How do we convince sovereign citizens that by claiming, and then burning, all their 10 replacement cards, they get loopholes out of paying federal income taxes?
Give them a federally issued punch card and say after you lose 10 social security cards you get a free sub and chips combo
That’s not the way it works.
Ummm have you ever seen Elon Musk’s social security card??? And how much tax does he pay??? That’s what I thought.
I would like to see Elon Musk’s birth certificate. He shouldn’t be president if he isn’t a legal citizen.
It’s somewhere in South Africa. And just in case, you have to be a citizen of the US by birth to be eligible for the presidency.
That’s why he’s “not” the president…
“Never try to argue with an idiot. He’ll drag you down to his level and then win by experience.”
Samuel Clemens
Yes you can’tn’t
Oh, a gif! I take back everything I said.
Checkmate theist
My ass it isnt commie
From what I’ve heard, your rear end has been attacked more than Stalingrad was.
jk
hopefully all record of replacements will seem gay for some reason and get scrubbed.
"It’s for TRANSactions? DEFUNDED!
How many times until they catch the cocksuckers that keep stealing them then?
At 44, I’m pretty sure it’s been stolen ten times.
Or better yet, unfuck the system that requires us to have the damned things?
Where are you keeping your social security card that it keeps getting stolen? Is it in your wallet or in your house somewhere and your getting broken into a whole bunch?
have you heard of the internet?
Wait, I can put physical objects there? I’ve been storing all of my stuff in the real world like a dummy.
ah, op means getting the actual card stolen? thats impressive. ssn gets leaked mostly through cyber events.
i’ve never had my SS card stolen because it stays at home inside of the random shit drawer
i’ve also never had my SSN stolen. maybe i’m just lucky but I don’t recall a time I ever inputted my SSN online besides the last 4 digits for some ID verification
GRANTED I agree that the 10 cards rule is silly. I think it was written for a different time. and realistically, you could lose your SSN card every 6 years from 18 years old ↦ 78 years old and you’ll only be denied at 78.
by then hopefully we’ve modernized the system a bit. maybe that’s too optimistic
More likely forget where it is. How often do you need to use it? Likely it gets stashed in some place and forgotten.
I’m ordering three every year until I have all 11, then I’m gonna keel over in anxiety.
I don’t think that what they meant by horcruxes.
You made me think I left a word in. I was trying to figure out the wording to say I would hide them like horcruxes for a while.
We should have a new rule: He/She who holds all 11 Social Security cards at age 35, without losing any of them, get a chance to become US president for 8 years, immune to impeachments. Every 8 years, all holders of all 11 Social Security cards between the age of 35 and 43 get locked in a room with all their cards and there will be a fight to see who can steal the most Social Security cards while keeping all their 11.
Whoever lose all their cards have to be punished: They will have to work at the IRS for the rest of their life (well unless they get too old, then they can get to leave). 🙃
This is definitely better than the electoral college.
Dude I’ve got plastic baggies those cards are going in nature’s pocket
40+ years, and I’m still on number one. I laminated mine, because I’m a rebel that way.
I keep mine in an old gift card tin along with my draft card, previous ID cards, backup insurance cards, and a couple other things.
Ah fuck I don’t know what happened to my draft card. If they weren’t okay with giving me a desk job but still insist ob drafting me they’d regret it more than I would (innocent fuckups can be expensive, and few people can fuck up to the extent I can).
What’s a draft card?
In the US men (and I think women now?) are required to sign up for the draft at age 18. You’re given a card confirming you’ve signed up.
might need to respawn
Haha, dammit I snorted. Fine, enjoy the upvote
Ruh roh… I can’t even remember how many times I’ve had it replaced. 😨
💀
But I have good news for you, I heard that they are dismantling the IRS 😂👌
How do you lose something that you’re supposed to leave in a secured place at home?
Had a young friend lose his SS card and license on a camping trip when the canoe dumped. I was laughing about it with his best friend.
“How the hell you bring your social security card camping?!”
“Well, I did too. We’re applying for lots of jobs.”
And you don’t have that shit memorized?!
Oh well, lesson learned I guess.
Do you need to have it to apply for a job? I’ve only ever needed it when actually starting a job but I’m Canadian.
No, we Americans only need to present it during the onboarding process. No one needs your SSN to apply. Caveat: Probably need it for security clearance jobs, but in those cases I assume you have a doc outlining your clearance level. LOL, been downvoted around here giving facts about hiring, so maybe I should shut up.
Because it’s so secure, even I forgot where it was kept.
Hardening against rubber hose cryptography
I got a head start… I wasn’t even issued one until multiple decades into my life!
