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HappynessMovement t1_iw74zr3 wrote

Reply to comment by port53 in I think I was just involved in a grift. by Dare2no

Or even if not, there are 10,000 combos of 0-9 for a 4 digits code like the last 4 of your SSN where if they already have the last digit, the number of combos for just a 3 digit code drops to 1000 if they were to try to brute force it. Significantly easier. Not sure that's what they were going for exactly, but it's a possibility.

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NicholasAakre t1_iw76ad1 wrote

Considering one of their questions was where OP was from, that's a strong possibility. If you know someone's birth city, that gives the first three digits.

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JohnJohnston t1_iw780o6 wrote

Depending on what year they were born. They made it random in 2011. But since OP was drinking I hope she was born prior to that.

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port53 t1_iw780yx wrote

And to further reduce the search space, while SSNs don't have a checksum they do have "strong formatting" which means certain combinations of numbers are invalid. If you're down to just 2 digits (100 guesses) and apply those rules, you've pretty much got the number.

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AaronBurrIsInnocent t1_iw7ets8 wrote

Not sure that’s true. My brother and I have the same first three but we’re born in different states.

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cakewench t1_iw88gk6 wrote

FWIW I think it's where you were when you applied for the SSN. Because I ended up with the DC SSN because that's where I was when I turned 12 or 13, but I was born somewhere else in the US.

So maybe you and your brother were living in the same place when your SSNs were applied for?

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