As has been recently reported, researchers from Carnegie Mellon University have announced that they have uncovered a method to accurately predict the Social Security Numbers (SSNs) of individuals by simply knowing two of the most basic and widely-available facts about people today: their dates of birth, and their States of birth. In their paper titled “Predicting Social Security Numbers from Public Data” (.pdf), researchers Alessandro Acquisti and Ralph Gross warn that they have uncovered a distinct and identifiable statistical pattern across SSNs of deceased persons –… More