Re:The Most Misused SSN of All Time
by mysterypie on Wednesday September 25, 2019 @03:47AM
(#21068677)
> They started using the number. They thought it was their own. I can't understand how people can be so stupid. I can't understand that.
Another possibility is that people deliberately used the number knowing that it was fake (or knowing that it belonged to someone else). Why? I can't imagine many reasons:
- distrust of this weird new Social Security program that was started just 3 years earlier, so they gave this fake number to avoid participating in this fraud or scam
- distrust of the federal government, esp. since the U.S. was still in The Great Depression and some people felt that Roosevelt was turning the U.S. into a socialist state, hence use of a fake number to avoid creating a socialist state
- people who had restarted their lives under a new identity (which was easy to do in an era where jobs paid cash and nobody needed real ID) -- to escape a spouse, the police, a criminal past -- would not want to get an SSN under their original name
- people living in the U.S. illegally were being asked by their employers for their SSNs, so they found this handy number to use
- people who were eligible for a genuine SSN but hadn't bothered to get one were being asked by their employers, so they gave the fake one
Another possibility is that people deliberately used the number knowing that it was fake (or knowing that it belonged to someone else). Why? I can't imagine many reasons:
- distrust of this weird new Social Security program that was started just 3 years earlier, so they gave this fake number to avoid participating in this fraud or scam
- distrust of the federal government, esp. since the U.S. was still in The Great Depression and some people felt that Roosevelt was turning the U.S. into a socialist state, hence use of a fake number to avoid creating a socialist state
- people who had restarted their lives under a new identity (which was easy to do in an era where jobs paid cash and nobody needed real ID) -- to escape a spouse, the police, a criminal past -- would not want to get an SSN under their original name
- people living in the U.S. illegally were being asked by their employers for their SSNs, so they found this handy number to use
- people who were eligible for a genuine SSN but hadn't bothered to get one were being asked by their employers, so they gave the fake one