• Citizen (unregistered)

    To think that something so odd would happen on my birthday...

  • Foo (unregistered) in reply to Slabby
    Slabby:
    Jerim wrote "Maybe I am crazy, but wouldn't using the SSN be the most glaringly obvious choice?"

    No law compels you to get a SSN for your newborns, and many people (including myself) put it off until the kids get their first jobs.

    Lack of SSN only makes claiming them as exemptions on your taxes a little dodgy, but there is a workaround for that.

    Not only that, but SSN's are not unique. The numbers are recycled some time after an individual dies.

  • phs3 (unregistered) in reply to Foo
    Foo:
    Not only that, but SSN's are not unique. The numbers are recycled some time after an individual dies.

    You know, folks keep saying that, but http://www.ssa.gov/history/hfaq.html explicitly states that they are not recycled. Why do you think otherwise?

    Captcha: gygax oy, geek trivia...

  • Franz Kafka (unregistered) in reply to phs3
    phs3:
    Foo:
    Not only that, but SSN's are not unique. The numbers are recycled some time after an individual dies.

    You know, folks keep saying that, but http://www.ssa.gov/history/hfaq.html explicitly states that they are not recycled. Why do you think otherwise?

    Captcha: gygax oy, geek trivia...

    Because we have examples of the same SSN being legitimately used for two people. The actual methodology is irrelevant.

  • Franz Kafka (unregistered) in reply to akatherder
    akatherder:
    Franz Kafka:
    Why would a car dealer need my ssn? I'm buying a car, not opening a bank account.

    They need to run a credit check. Unless of course you're paying with cash or you have secured an outside loan.

    Why would you ever show up at a car dealer without financing or cash?

  • phs3 (unregistered) in reply to Franz Kafka
    Franz Kafka:
    Because we have examples of the same SSN being legitimately used for two people. The actual methodology is irrelevant.

    OK, not trying to be a pain, but: "we" do? Cite please?

  • (cs) in reply to Ogilvy
    Ogilvy:
    It might be better if everyone were assigned a GUID at birth, tattooed somewhere visible... better make it a barcode, too, so it can be read at a distance by machines.

    That's what the nazis did with concentration camp inmates ...

  • (cs) in reply to Hognoxious
    Hognoxious:
    its me:
    Hello, remember Alex obfuscates the details of everything....

    Sun Life Canada (and every other real company name you read here....) is never the actual company name....

    That's not obfuscating. It's misleading and confusing.

    Using a fictitious or generic name ("a large insurance co") would be better.

    "Sun Life Elbonia" seems like a goof idea to me. On the other hand, using "Sun Life Canada" problably taught a lot of people a lot of stuff about national id numbers in Canada (and other countries, too).

  • Bryan Price (unregistered)

    Two sets of twins here. May 3rd and May 10th. Boy/boy, boy/girl, both fraternal.

    When we had Aetna, if there was a problem, we never had to deal directly with it.

    Now that we're with UHC and Merck, every year, and I do mean every year, there seems to be some problem. God forbid that they both get the same medicine. I call, the pharmacy calls, the doctor calls, it has taken months sometimes to get things straight.

    The older set (the 3rd) are in the Army now, so it's the Army that has to keep them straight. It was most amusing at boot camp where one went into the same rotation right after the other one. Everybody thought it was his brother that was coming back to boot. The poor boy was forced into the same unit as his brother, and slept in the same bunk as his brother.

  • Oliver (unregistered) in reply to Thomas
    Thomas:
    Jerim:
    Not everyone in the world is out to steal your identity. If it ever does happen, it is a pretty easy thing to take care of. Just file a police report and inform everyone. Yeah it's a pain in the butt, but it is not like someone is going to ruin your life. That is just media hysteria to get you to pay an extra $5 a month in identity theft protection that you will never use.
    You obviously don't get the scope of identity theft....

    You can buy a house or two, couple of airplanes or whatever you want, drive drunk or over somebody, beat people up and do whatever you want which doesn't put you to jail immediately. And everything eventually falls on the guy you stole the identity from, not you.

    The simple fact that you two are debating this is an example of how successful the American financial companies are at transferring their responsibility to their customer.

    The fact is there is no such thing as an "identity theft". You are you, your identity cannot be "stolen". A thief can, however, trick your bank into thinking he is you, this act used to be call "fraud". And guess what, when a fraud occurs, most people will think that the bank is responsible for the loss. Especially if the bank only asked for the thief publicly available information (name, SSN, DOB etc) to identify him as the real customer.

    Now, enter the term "identify theft". Suddenly, the bank is not longer the victim. The victim is you! You "let" your identity be stolen, so when the thief withdraw all your money from your bank, YOU take the loss, not the bank! When a thief takes out a mortgage in your name, it is your problem, not the stupid bank who gives out a million without verifying the lender actually owns anything!

    The root problem is the idiotic authentication method used by companies to let thief takes all you money with little more than publicly available information. As long as people accepts the stupid idea that their identity can somehow be "stolen", instead of holding their banks responsible, the problem will only get worse.

  • Who am I? Let's just say, Bob. (unregistered) in reply to Oliver
    Oliver:
    Thomas:
    Jerim:
    Not everyone in the world is out to steal your identity. If it ever does happen, it is a pretty easy thing to take care of. Just file a police report and inform everyone. Yeah it's a pain in the butt, but it is not like someone is going to ruin your life. That is just media hysteria to get you to pay an extra $5 a month in identity theft protection that you will never use.
    You obviously don't get the scope of identity theft....

    You can buy a house or two, couple of airplanes or whatever you want, drive drunk or over somebody, beat people up and do whatever you want which doesn't put you to jail immediately. And everything eventually falls on the guy you stole the identity from, not you.

    The simple fact that you two are debating this is an example of how successful the American financial companies are at transferring their responsibility to their customer.

    The fact is there is no such thing as an "identity theft". You are you, your identity cannot be "stolen". A thief can, however, trick your bank into thinking he is you, this act used to be call "fraud". And guess what, when a fraud occurs, most people will think that the bank is responsible for the loss. Especially if the bank only asked for the thief publicly available information (name, SSN, DOB etc) to identify him as the real customer.

    Now, enter the term "identify theft". Suddenly, the bank is not longer the victim. The victim is you! You "let" your identity be stolen, so when the thief withdraw all your money from your bank, YOU take the loss, not the bank! When a thief takes out a mortgage in your name, it is your problem, not the stupid bank who gives out a million without verifying the lender actually owns anything!

    The root problem is the idiotic authentication method used by companies to let thief takes all you money with little more than publicly available information. As long as people accepts the stupid idea that their identity can somehow be "stolen", instead of holding their banks responsible, the problem will only get worse.

    +infinity insightful

  • Marnanel (unregistered) in reply to J Random Hacker
  • JohnB (unregistered) in reply to Calli Arcale
    Calli Arcale:
    Jackal von ÖRF:
    facetious:
    Two children born a month apart is more likely than twins! Woo overlapping pregnancies!
    With proper pipelining and an initial delay of nine months, it would be possible to produce one baby per month.*
    • Assuming one female and monthly ovulation.

    Believe it or not, it is actually possible (in a particular extremely rare circumstance) for a woman to give birth to twins a month apart. It has happened! The most recent case was a woman in Australia. Turned out, she was one of the very rare women who can ovulate while pregnant; one of her twins was conceived more than a month after the first. When her water broke, doctors somehow helped her deliver the gestationally older baby, and then put her on bed rest until the second twin was mature enough to be born. I seem to recall it was almost two months between the babies.

    Try explaining that to an insurance provider. ;-)

    Recently, twins -- identical twins! -- were born in different months and in different years but only minutes apart. You guessed it: first one arrived just before midnight, the other arrived just after midnight and it was new year's eve.

  • Smith (unregistered) in reply to jtsampson
    jtsampson:
    G@d help the John Smiths of the world!
    Tell me about it [email protected]
  • Jasmine (unregistered)

    Funny :) Having done some work for Sun Life in the past, this doesn't surprise me at all. I didn't make this mistake though... you will find my bugs in their accounting department :)

  • Ivan (unregistered) in reply to tharfagreinir

    Ha ha, in Bulgaria there is also such an ID-number for every person. But guess what, it has the following structure

    YY MM DD XXXX

    The first six digits are for your birthday - Year, Month, Day, other stuff. That's right, only 6 digits for the date! The big-brother idiots that made the system in the 80's didn't assume it would be used until 2000!

    So a child born after 2000 becomes 20 added to his month-value: on 2005-12-20 -> 05 32 20 XXXX

    Greets

  • (cs)

    If you view from a software project perspective, the younger child was an unforseen feature, and thus a change in requirements. That lead to the delivery of the first child accordingly to schedule, but the extra features needed more time and was delivered a month late.

    It makes perfect sense.

  • vqajkrfsi crtznygq (unregistered)

    vrab fbroe wult qohmpufs pgckmrjwe aivpwso jwip

  • vqajkrfsi crtznygq (unregistered)

    vrab fbroe wult qohmpufs pgckmrjwe aivpwso jwip

  • Cheshire (unregistered)

    Regardless of the SSN issue, the programmers of that software should be beaten with a hose, and dropped into a pit with an elephant on PCP for overlooking such an obvious necessity. That's what meeting deadlines instead of making a sound product will get you.

  • Cheshire (unregistered)

    Regardless of the SSN issue, the programmers of that software should be beaten with a hose, and dropped into a pit with an elephant on PCP for overlooking such an obvious necessity. That's what meeting deadlines instead of making a sound product will get you.

  • hognoxious (unregistered) in reply to cklam
    cklam:
    "Sun Life Elbonia" seems like a goof idea to me. On the other hand, using "Sun Life Canada" problably taught a lot of people a lot of stuff about national id numbers in Canada (and other countries, too).
    As would a fictitious company name in a real country. Or were you trying to be funny?
  • Philip B. (unregistered) in reply to oh geez

    Ok, just to prove the critics wrong, I just received my reenrolment documentation for 2007/2008 and it contains the following text:

    Multiple Births - The Sun Life system is now equipped to record actual dates of births for twins, triplets and quadruplets. Please review and update the dependents date of birth that is located on the dependent information page - in the Sun Life re-enronlment tool.

    WTF 1 - Sun Life 0

  • Bloopy (unregistered)

    My parents had a less serious but similar problem. They don't have twins, but they do have twin credit cards. So they each have their own card, but the numbers are identical and they link to the same account. Here, Vodafone only allows each credit card number to be associated with one mobile phone. You can imagine the trouble someone who owned multiple phones might have if they want to top up their prepay accounts.

  • Sam (unregistered)

    Where best surfing I found... Very entertaining...! Congrats!!!

  • Who Me? (unregistered) in reply to Mr Moo

    If a business or other enterprise asks you for your SSN, you can refuse to give it. However, that may mean doing without the purchase or service for which your number was requested. For example, utility companies and other services ask for an SSN, but do not need it; they can do a credit check or identify the person in their records by alternative means.

    Giving your SSN is voluntary, even when you are asked for the number directly. If requested, you should ask why your SSN is needed, how your number will be used, what law requires you to give your number and what the consequences are if you refuse. The answers to these questions can help you decide if you want to give your Social Security number. The decision is yours.

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