paulHarkonen t1_iw7n8c3 wrote on November 13, 2022 at 4:19 PM

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

https://www.ssa.gov/employer/randomization.html

Thankfully SSA has realized that system was a significant security risk and has moved to a randomized system (although most people will still have the old setup).

OcelotControl78 t1_iw824u4 wrote on November 13, 2022 at 6:00 PM

My mother's SSN got totally messed up b/c they gave her a duplicate number when she was born. it had the incorrect geographical identifier for where she was born, which should have been a hint to the particular IRS employee who handled it (this was way before the process was automated). It took her U.S. Senator's office to liaise w/ Social Security to disambiguate her employment history from the other person's & get a new SSN issued. It took years.

paulHarkonen t1_iw8ctku wrote on November 13, 2022 at 7:08 PM

IRS doesn't deal with SSNs, that's the social security administration (SSA).

That said, that's rough for your mom. My issue with mine wound up being amusing and simple to fix rather than an enormous pain. Apparently when mine was issued it was marked as female (I'm male and was born as such) which triggered some fraud alerts when I started my first job. For me the fix was a simple trip to my local SSA office and saying "I'm male" but I've heard plenty of frustrating stories trying to sort out different issues.

OcelotControl78 t1_iwgqka7 wrote on November 15, 2022 at 2:58 PM

SSA, when I was growing up wasn't an independent agency, but I was wrong on its parent agency, which was Dept. of Health & Human Services. Today I learned it b/c an independent agency in 1994.

paulHarkonen t1_iwgutxn wrote on November 15, 2022 at 3:28 PM

Ah, interesting. TIL it wasn't always an independent agency, I'm young enough that all my interactions were with it as an independent one (I didn't deal with them much as an elementary schooler lol).