Joined: 17 Mar 2004
Posts: 13332
Location: Up your butt with a coconut!!
Renewing SSN's?
As I was sitting here thinking about the two new hacks announced today (SnapChat and Dairy Queen) the thought occurred to me... I wonder if we all shouldn't just change our credit/debit card numbers annually or on some other routine basis. Then I thought, why not SSN as well?
Discuss... _________________ For with what measure you measure it will be measured to you.
Fri Oct 10, 2014 8:53 am
Menos
Broke My Labia
Joined: 06 Jun 2003
Posts: 1125
Location: Oklahoma City
Don't think there are enough possible combinations to do that unless you started reusing numbers.
Fri Oct 10, 2014 5:06 pm
TehDanMan
Guerilla Ontologist
Joined: 01 Jul 2003
Posts: 13143
You can only change your SSN once TMK. _________________ Blargle Flarg Bergah Merg
Sat Oct 11, 2014 3:52 pm
Shinare
SEXNOCULAR
Joined: 17 Mar 2004
Posts: 13332
Location: Up your butt with a coconut!!
Menos wrote: Don't think there are enough possible combinations to do that unless you started reusing numbers.
Perhaps they start using alphas as well? (and thereby piss off every programmer and database administrator ever born) _________________ For with what measure you measure it will be measured to you.
Mon Oct 13, 2014 4:15 pm
Shinare
SEXNOCULAR
Joined: 17 Mar 2004
Posts: 13332
Location: Up your butt with a coconut!!
Plunk wrote: You can only change your SSN once TMK.
Suckage.,.. _________________ For with what measure you measure it will be measured to you.
Mon Oct 13, 2014 4:15 pm
LightningCrash
Smile like Bob, order your free LC today
Joined: 03 Apr 2003
Posts: 5020
Shinare wrote:
Perhaps they start using alphas as well? (and thereby piss off every programmer and database administrator ever born)
Maybe they could use the base16 of the number instead
Thu Oct 16, 2014 11:20 am
Sevnn
Candy Cane King
Joined: 22 Mar 2003
Posts: 7711
Location: Kyrat
The only thing a base16 would do over alphas would be reduced computing storage needed and with modern computers who gives a damn about that, and reduced confusion between character recognition (zero vs O) but those are also easily solvable by removing certain characters from use. Alphas would allow for a significantly higher number of available values without increasing the length of the character string.
Thu Oct 16, 2014 12:37 pm
LightningCrash
Smile like Bob, order your free LC today
Joined: 03 Apr 2003
Posts: 5020
I kind of assumed the number of possible values would be extended along with a move to the encoding. If you added 3 digits to the number it wouldn't add a lot to the base16 encode. The reasoning for base16: I was thinking more from the standpoint of easy input validation, which programmers often forget.
Kind of ironic really.
They've issued about 450-something million SSNs out of a possible 740-something million. Maybe it would be a good time to move to something else altogether.
Thu Oct 16, 2014 5:38 pm
blu
Step on my cubes.
Joined: 19 Mar 2003
Posts: 4638
I use base 62 numbers fairly regularly for my encrypting, but I might be the only one.
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