I'm not convinced. All it would take is OCR to read one of the zeroes as the letter 'O' instead, and suddenly there's your SSN out in the open. That's at least a civil lawsuit, maybe a criminal one, depending on context. (Healthcare, banking, etc. have strict laws in the US regarding the release of personal information.)

In other words, the risks avoided by paying the best heuristic computer known to man -- a human -- far outweighs the cost of the resource.