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Compare Accounts. The Social Security number, now used by most agencies and businesses to identify individuals, is the one they landed on.
The first three numerals in a Social Security number are called the Area Number. After a lot of deliberation and debate about how to distribute Social Security numbers to the workers of America, it was decided to send out 10, numbers to each post office in the country to distribute to people registering for the Old Age Pension fund. In general, the lower numbers were given on the east coast and the numbers rose the farther west the post office was.
As you can imagine, some post offices ran out of numbers faster than others. However, not all the workers got Social Security numbers in their own postal districts. There was no rule you had to apply for Social Security in the state where you lived—you could apply anywhere. Also, many big corporations with employees around the country had their employee register in the state where the corporation was based.
You can find a list of these area numbers on the Social Security website. Starting in , the administration moved the processing of all Social Security applications to Baltimore.
But many people have mailing addresses in places other than where they live. Then around , the administration started working on a plan to address the fact that some heavily populated places were running out of numbers while sparsely populated places had more than enough. They decided to start randomly assigning numbers out of the remaining pool and began doing so in There are some interesting exceptions to the area numbers corresponding to a place—even before For example, until , sequence belonged to railroad workers.
More recently, numbers were allocated to the Department of Homeland Security to be issued through the Enumeration at Entry program. The number was divided among American Samoa, Guam, the Philippines, Americans employed abroad by American employers.
Numbers through , and numbers through , were assigned to Mississippi and Florida, respectively, to be used after those states exhausted their initial area numbers. In the meantime, please feel free to search for ways to make a difference in your community at www. Javascript must be enabled to use this site. Please enable Javascript in your browser and try again. Now Reading:. Membership My Account. Rewards for Good. Share with facebook.
Share with twitter. Share with linkedin. Share using email. Besides being better suited to the digital age, randomization serves two main purposes: It makes life harder for identity thieves. It extends the longevity of the nine-digit Social Security number. Individuals could apply at any office, so the area number was not an indication of where they lived or worked. Anyone who applied for a social security number between and will have an area number that correlates to the mailing address listed on their application SSA.
However, the area number cannot be used to determine residence since you can have mail sent to any location. The middle section of numbers is simply there to make administration easier for the SSA. The group number ranges from 01 to 99 and allows Social Security Numbers with the same area number to be broken into smaller pairings. Geographic data is not indicated by the group number. The serial number ranges from to and is assigned consecutively within each group number.
As you can see, your social security number does not expressly say anything about you. Even the area number, which was tied to a location for 76 years, cannot be used to accurately pinpoint a residence.
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