My New Blog

I found this blog by Len Penzo to be very informative.  I hope you do too. Lynda Fleming, Customer Service Rep for Integrity Mortgage

**************************************************

This weekend I was looking through the safe that holds all of my most important documents, like family birth certificates, insurance policies and the secret recipe for mom’s sauce, when I ran across my Social Security card.

Now I’ll wager that, if you poll a room full of people at a triple-keg Super Bowl party, over half of them wouldn’t be able to tell you the license plate number of their car — and that’s before the kick-off.  However, if you asked those same folk to recite their Social Security number, they would all be able to do it forward and backward — even after the kegs are empty.

If you’re like me, maybe you’ve wondered if there was any rhyme or reason to how Social Security card numbers are determined.  Well, wonder no more, because while you were out enjoying the weekend, I was sitting here in my chair researching the story behind our Social Security numbers.  I know.  Don’t say a word.

Anyway, here’s what I found out:

1. Since 1936, over 420 million different Social Security numbers have been issued.

2. Over 5.5 million new numbers are assigned every year.

3. The first three digits of a Social Security number are known as the area number.  Area numbers assigned before 1972 reflect the state where you applied for your number; otherwise, they are based upon the Social Security card application mailing address zip-code.

4. Some people believe the next two digits, called the group number, helps identify a person’s race.  It doesn’t.

5. The two-digit group number was actually created as way to organize Social Security Administration filing cabinets into sub-groups to make them more manageable.

6. The last four digits on a Social Security card are serial numbers that are issued consecutively within a group from 0001 to 9999.

7.  Area numbers are assigned geographically with the lowest numbers in the northeast and the highest in the northwest.  That practice will no longer apply, however, after a new randomized assignment methodology officially goes into effect on June 25, 2011.

http://lenpenzo.com/blog/id1510-18-fast-facts-you-didnt-know-about-social-security-numbers.html