Poll: What is your social security number?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2146686

by j_baker • 15 years ago

8 19 15 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

jacques_chester• 15 years ago

You need an entry for "Not a US citizen".

nostrademons2• 15 years ago

Eh, still not as invasive as FaceBook.

coderdude5• 15 years ago

Still just as opt-in as Facebook. Go baseless Facebook bashing!

nostrademons2• 15 years ago

That was my point. People will voluntarily give up far more information to FaceBook, so why should one be surprised that they'd answer a poll about the first 3 digits of their SSN? (Which are based on their state of birth anyway, which is usually public information.)

callahad2• 15 years ago

Fun Fact: The first three numbers are actually assigned based on your state of birth, as per this chart: http://www.socialsecurity.gov/employer/stateweb.htm

atgm• 15 years ago

I wanted to see if the numbers still applied for people who are naturalized US citizens, but I couldn't actually connect to the site.

callahad2• 15 years ago

According to http://www.socialsecurity.gov/employer/randomization.html the Social Security Administration has been centrally issuing all new SSNs since the 1970's, and has been basing the prefix on the postal code from which the application was mailed. In June, they plan to ditch the semantic groupings and start assigning numbers arbitrarily from the pool of unused numbers, so it will lose significance then.

Also, you can apparently request a new SSN if you object to the digits contained in yours: http://ssa-custhelp.ssa.gov/app/answers/detail/a_id/292

jusob• 15 years ago

I got my SSN number while I was a foreign student in Chicago. My first 3 digits correspond to Illinois.

gsivil4• 15 years ago

Polls are becoming the new "Offer HN"! Hopefully this trend will not last too long

EDIT: I am not talking about this one of course

coderdude5• 15 years ago

IMO the trend is users with <100 karma posting Ask HNs. If you watch the newest page, nearly every single Ask HN (or other text submissions) are all by brand new users or people with otherwise a very low amount of karma. It's like they've all been introduced to something new and want to try it out. Some new users only post Ask HNs.

At least with polls it's either not obvious how you create them or the karma threshold required to pass is incredibly high.

gsivil4• 15 years ago

I do not want to make it personal but I like ASK HN and I post ASK HN quite often. Ask HN is something that I guess was here long before I joined HN and it will be here for long time. Polls rarely initiate interesting discussion. This is the nature of a Poll unfortunately. Asking questions or advice is in the core of HN IMO.

qas1981• 15 years ago

When I looked at this poll I was really curious as to who would post their social! I'm sure tons of others did too!

gsivil4• 15 years ago

I am not a citizen but I have SSN. This things are not mutually exclusive. Every US citizen has to have one but even non permanent aliens can have one.

olalonde• 15 years ago

Polls on HN never assume/enforce mutual exclusion.

gcb• 15 years ago

missing option: I can't remember :)

most places i simply state that i don't have one/still waiting for it. exceptions being government buildings and tax forms at work

Poll: What is your social security number?

Related Stories