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Comment by donatj | Hacker News Reader

The small private college I attended in the early aughts used your SSN as your student ID and it was printed on everything. Transcripts, official records, basically any piece of paper with your name on it. You'd even speak it aloud to the worker at the book store to pick up your books for the semester. It was everywhere.

As a kid twenty years ago, I was mildly bothered by it but imagined they must know what they are doing.

Looking back at near 40, with the hindsight of years, I'm flummoxed. Like, what the hell, who's absolutely terrible idea was this?

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To be fair, that's pretty much the intended usage. The SSN is supposed to enable them to figure out exactly which John Smith they're looking at.

It's a serial number, not a shared secret. It sounds like your college treated it as such.

The real problem with SSN is the prevalence of unintended usage.

> the intended usage

IMHO, as the name suggests, the intended usage is for social security. We're not supposed to have Citizen ID numbers which is why the number has been shoe-horned into this role.

>The real problem with SSN is the prevalence of unintended usage.

There is nothing more permanent than a temporary solution, and nothing more temporary than a permanent solution.

I would have sworn I've read the opposite but found this history [1] outlining usage of SSNs:

> Private sector use of the SSN is neither specifically authorized nor restricted. People are asked for an SSN at banks, video rental outlets, hospitals, etc., and may refuse to give it. However, the provider may, in turn, decline to furnish the product or service, leaving some to conclude they have no real choice.

> Throughout the history of the Social Security program, the SSN, originally intended to be used only to record Social Security earnings, has been adopted for other purposes, both governmental and private. The broad-based coverage of the Social Security program makes the SSN widely available and a convenient common data element for all record-keeping systems and data exchanges.

[1] https://www.ssa.gov/history/reports/ssnreportc2.html

In the 1980s, professors used to print out the list of exam scores and tape it on their office door so students could check their score (something younger generations would find quaint, I'd imagine). Because people might be embarrassed by their score, they were "anonymized" by student ID rather than by name. As in your case, our student IDs were our SSNs and nobody saw a problem with it yet (I'm a bit surprised that in your school's case they were still doing it in the early 21st century, but institutional inertia, I suppose).

I assume some schools today are still using SSNs as if its not a PII issue.

Had basically the same experience at a large public college. I had classes which would print out a list of SSN and test scores for everyone in the room to look at.

Before the Internet SSN was "presumed secret" but it became a tragedy of the commons. By 2000 it was the equivalent of your public key and should have been treated as such by institutions, never used as password like that bookstore did.

Student ID card would have been the right way to verify identity at a college; I'd forgotten the SID defaulted to SSN, which was also really lazy decision!

It was also my first DL number. Both colleges and VA DMV changed to calculated serial numbers around the same time (late 90s, IIRC).

But, to me, using SSN as a unique serial number feels correct. As somebody else mentioned, that's what it is - a serial number, not a shared secret. "Which John Smith are you?" is very similar to the VIN on a car answering "which Honda Civic?" SSN never proves that you are actually the John Smith you claim.

My dad etched his SSN on his tools back in the day. It was my student ID as well. Wasn't the SSN not considered secret until later when more transactions happened online instead of IRL where it was harder to impersonate someone?

The bad idea was to try to convert a semi-public number into a secret identifier.

I forgot all about that!

Back in the 80's, NYC had a program where the local police stations would lend you engravers so you could engrave your SSN on your TV, stereo, etc., so they could be returned if they were stolen and found. Probably also made pawn shops more reluctant to take them.

Guess it made sense at the time ;-)

The bad idea was to have a secret identifier in the first place. Who thought that "a ten digit number printed on a bunch of documents" was a good thing to use as sole proof of someone's identity?

Slightly related, my uni id was a prefix for the campus + year of admission + serial number

the serial number was sequential based on last name, you could essentially guess anyones student id if you had a couple of data points of last name : serial number

As far as I know no one used it for nefarious purposes, but it was a cool party trick to guess someone’s number.

I bet they're still doing it ;)

Nope. They shut down in 2012 and their campus was taken over by a popular coding bootcamp.

Ah interesting, I wouldnt be surprised if other colleges are doing this kind of thing to this day though...

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