Social security numbers can be predicted using 'readily available data'

2009-07-09

Social security numbers can be predicted by taking readily available data from governmental sources, commercial data bases or social networks, it has been suggested.

Carnegie Mellon University researchers have revealed that this data, which could be taken with the use of screen scraping, can be used to predict most or all of the nine-digit social security number.

The date and state of birth are good enough pieces of data to guess a person's social security number with great accuracy, according to Alessandro Acquisti, associate professor of information technology and public policy at Carnegie Mellon's H John Heinz III College, and Ralph Gross, a post-doctoral researcher at the Heinz College.

"In a world of wired consumers, it is possible to combine information from multiple sources to infer data that is more personal and sensitive than any single piece of original information alone," said Mr Acquisti.

It recently emerged that the wife of the future head of MI6 Sir John Sawers had placed personal data of her husband and family on social networking site Facebook.