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9mo ago

YSK that if you lose your Social Security Card (USA) more than 10 times, the Social Security Administration will have to, by law, refuse to issue anymore replacement cards, for the rest of your life.

en.wikipedia.org Social Security number - Wikipedia

Why YSK: If you are a US Resident, don't lose your Social Security card more than 10 times, or else you might need to respawn 💀

Excerpt from Wikipedia:

In accordance with §7213 of the 9/11 Commission Implementation Act of 2004 and 20 CFR 422.103, the number of replacement Social Security cards per person is generally limited to three per calendar year and ten in a lifetime.

167 comments

Avoid paying taxes with this one weird trick
- How do we convince sovereign citizens that by claiming, and then burning, all their 10 replacement cards, they get loopholes out of paying federal income taxes?
  
  Give them a federally issued punch card and say after you lose 10 social security cards you get a free sub and chips combo
- That's not the way it works.
  
  Ummm have you ever seen Elon Musk’s social security card???? And how much tax does he pay???? That’s what I thought.
  
  My ass it isnt commie

Why. The hell. Are we supposed to keep sacred a piece of paper that only has 9 precious numbers we can't choose, but that will permanently identify us, that will deteriorate over time, we're not supposed to laminate or protect it, and we only have limited replacements!? So dumb...
- Got rained on when I went to a new job about 10 years ago, had it in my wallet so they could copy it for new hire bs. The colors bled and the blue stained other parts of the card. I never got it replaced but seriously, it isn't even as durable as a dollar bill.
  
  That part is actually by design. The thought being that if you lose it that it will be more likely to be naturally destroyed than have the time to be found by someone with nefarious aims.
  The 10 max rule (which allows for exceptions) was from 2004 when presumably they assumed most people did not have reason to be walking around with theirs all the time. I don't know why it was put in place, other than a cursory search seeming to be antiterrorism bs, but 10 is kinda a lot for a document you generally don't need to carry with you and don't need very often in general. Probably super difficult for people that struggle with housing though.
- Murrica
- You can use plastic sleeve covers, just nothing permanent like laminate. You can't scan it with laminate.
  
  "scan it"!? They don't have barcodes on them, do they? I haven't replaced mine in a while, but it certainly didn't...
- I've got a locked file cabinet with folders for all my important documents like social security card, birth certificate, the degrees I don't have hanging on the wall, lease contracts, stuff like that. Also a shitton of appliance manuals
  
  That certainly doesn't sound like the first thing to get utterly torched in a house fire.
- It's fucking absurd. It is the flimsiest piece of paper imaginable too (unless it's been changed recently).
  Also, I'm pretty sure you have to pay a fee to replace it, so why the fuck do they limit it?
  
  For decades i've had mine in perfect shape. I don't understand what's so hard in terms of protecting the original.
  If your house is on fire then sure, you need a replacement. If your house catches fire, gets drowned by a biblical flood, has an earthquake swallow it, a volcano erupts underneath it, and has a meteorite strike it - all at different times, all destroying your SS card, you can still get replacements.
  10 is enough. If someone is going to lose it more than that they should probably not keep one. It's not like you need it for anything, you just need the number. A passport or state real ID covers identification.
- You can laminate it. New ones don't say not to, mine is and have never even been asked about it.

Social security numbers need to be phased out. Such a ridiculous and outdated system.
- It's important to remember social security numbers were created ONLY to track Social Security benefits. And the Social Security Bureau continually advised everyone to please not use them for a way to teach other things, but no one listened so here we are. The Bureau readily admits it's not designed to do anything else . https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19697506/#%3A%7E%3Atext=Abstract%2Cas+a+nearly+universal+identifier.
  
  But they're shit even for that. Part of tracking Social Security benefits is tracking taxes paid to Social Security. Unlike other forms of ID, like credit cards, SSNs have no check digits or other means of error prevention. Take a valid SSN. Change on of the digits. That new number is also a valid SSN. Any random 9-digit number can be a valid SSN.
  What this means is that all it takes to screw up any form with an SSN on it is to have illegible handwriting on a single one of the digits. You make a single easy error on an employment form, and now your SS taxes are registered under the wrong number.
  I'm also skeptical of the Social Security Bureau's stance on insisting it wasn't intended as a broad identifier. OF COURSE it was going to be used as an identifier! It's the only single ID number that the federal government gives out to everyone. OF COURSE it's going to be used for that. Such a number is of such obvious and great utility that of course it was going to be used for broader purposes. If you create something of such obvious utility, you have an obligation to make sure it's made well.
  It also really strains credulity when Social Security has an entire system dedicated to allowing third parties to verify SSNs. It's literally called The Social Security Verification Service.
  If the Social Security Administration really didn't want SSNs being used for purposes other than Social Security, then they could have easily prevented them for being used for such purposes. Think about how your SSN works with your bank. You apply for a bank account. They ask you your SSN. You tell them. But how do they know that this information is accurate? Your bank contacts Social Security! The bank has a form you sign that gives permission for them to as the Social Security Bureau to confirm your SSN. And the Social Security office happily obliges.
  The Social Security Administration doesn't just tolerate the use of SSNs for third party uses. It actively facilitates such third party uses of SSNs.
  
  Yup. It's ridiculous that it's snowballed into this precious secret that you have to give to most employers 🤦🏻
- we should just give everyone a uuid.
  
  I take 1
  
  Just brand a number into their necks, that should make things easier
- Right? Children should be minted as on the block chain. They're basically NFTs.
  
  Huh, at a glance, that might actually be a good use for the blockchain.
  
  So if I have a child, I can use them as speculative currency?
  How much does this NFT go for?
- Why? Because the system itself is arcane and could be done smarter? Or because the government has no business being able to distinguish between people with the same name? I need to understand this before going into a discussion with you.
  
  Or because the government has no business being able to distinguish between people with the same name?
  Seems like an objectively terrible approach, considering people with the same name have gotten the same SSN before.
  Such an ID would have to be unique.
  
  Like you, I am waiting to see what asinine response they give.

I’m ordering three every year until I have all 11, then I’m gonna keel over in anxiety.
- I don’t think that what they meant by horcruxes.
  
  You made me think I left a word in. I was trying to figure out the wording to say I would hide them like horcruxes for a while.

so if you want to ruin someones life, just steal their social security card 10 times?

Ruh roh... I can't even remember how many times I've had it replaced. 😨
- How do you lose something that you're supposed to leave in a secured place at home?
  
  Had a young friend lose his SS card and license on a camping trip when the canoe dumped. I was laughing about it with his best friend.
  "How the hell you bring your social security card camping?!"
  "Well, I did too. We're applying for lots of jobs."
  And you don't have that shit memorized?!
  Oh well, lesson learned I guess.
  
  Because it's so secure, even I forgot where it was kept.
- I got a head start... I wasn't even issued one until multiple decades into my life!

might need to respawn
Haha, dammit I snorted. Fine, enjoy the upvote

40+ years, and I'm still on number one. I laminated mine, because I'm a rebel that way.
- I keep mine in an old gift card tin along with my draft card, previous ID cards, backup insurance cards, and a couple other things.
  
  Ah fuck I don't know what happened to my draft card. If they weren't okay with giving me a desk job but still insist ob drafting me they'd regret it more than I would (innocent fuckups can be expensive, and few people can fuck up to the extent I can).

How many times until they catch the removed that keep stealing them then?
At 44, I'm pretty sure it's been stolen ten times.
Or better yet, unfuck the system that requires us to have the damned things?
- Where are you keeping your social security card that it keeps getting stolen? Is it in your wallet or in your house somewhere and your getting broken into a whole bunch?
  
  have you heard of the internet?
- i've never had my SS card stolen because it stays at home inside of the random shit drawer
  i've also never had my SSN stolen. maybe i'm just lucky but I don't recall a time I ever inputted my SSN online besides the last 4 digits for some ID verification
  GRANTED I agree that the 10 cards rule is silly. I think it was written for a different time. and realistically, you could lose your SSN card every 6 years from 18 years old ↦ 78 years old and you'll only be denied at 78.
  by then hopefully we've modernized the system a bit. maybe that's too optimistic
- More likely forget where it is. How often do you need to use it? Likely it gets stashed in some place and forgotten.

I don’t get it. Is a social secuirty thingy the same as what National ID’s are for in other countries?
- It's not supposed to be an identifier, but since it's the only nationally-assigned designation all citizens get it's treated like one.
  Which is stupid. It's incredibly insecure, vitally important, leaked to every bad actor on the planet already, and unchangeable when it gets compromised (which it has been).
  
  Sounds fitting for a country run by Trump of all people.
- Yes, but in that typically bonkers American way you also have to keep it secret (so nobody can steal your identity), while at the same time revealing it to every Tom, Dick and Harry every time you have to prove your identity.
  
  If you know their name and their location I believe you can make a very well educated guess at their social security number too
  
  I assume most people's social security numbers are out on the dark web nowadays.
  Salt typhoon leak a few months ago released 60 million of them iirc.
- Yes, sort of, but in a stupid way. The number is treated as a unique identifier of a person, but you don't carry it around since it's so insecure.
  
  Why not just use the passport number? Or does your passport have the SS number?
- Yesn't.
  In a nutshell, Social Security is a government run pension/retirement savings system. With a few exceptions you can look up on your own if you're curious, every American worker pays into the social security system as a tax on income. Each person in the system, so basically everyone working a job in the US, gets an account number, their Social Security Number.
  For awhile after the system started, you'd get your SSN when you got your first job. At some point, they introduced a tax credit for parents with children, if you had a child you could deduct them on your taxes. People started claiming they had more kids than they did to pay less taxes. Sure, let's just tell the government we have 12 kids, they won't know we only have 5. The solution to this problem was to require the children being claimed had social security numbers. This had two effects: 1. it got rid of those "paper children," and 2. Signing up for social security and getting a social security number is part of being born; every American now has a serial number, issued on a card.
  The kind of people who are ruining our nation right now are opposed to a national ID system because they hate being part of a functioning society. So we don't have a national ID card the way many nations do. State governments issue a number of IDs of various types, the de facto standard for identification in the US is a driver's license. The vast majority of Americans have one. But, not all. The only unique number common to (practically) ALL Americans is a Social Security Number.
  Numbers like credit card numbers or sanely designed ID systems have built-in checksums, not every number that fits the regex for a Visa card number is a valid Visa card number. A social security number doesn't have that; it wasn't intended as an ID number, it's an account number, you can tell when and where it was issued by looking at it because it's a serial number. And because most Americans younger than the president were issued their numbers at birth, you can guess a lot of their number based on where and when they were born. The last four digits are a simple serial number...and often used by banks and such as a second factor. "Okay, just tell me your date of birth and the last four of your social." the bank teller will ask you out loud.
  It's something we're gonna have to fix after the war.
  
  every American worker pays into the social security system as a tax on income.
  One irritating note on this: there's a limit to how much social security tax you pay per year. So if you're making a lot of income, you just stop paying this tax partway through the year.
  This is pants on head stupid and regressive. It should be the other way around. Your first, let's say $10,000 should be exempt from the tax, and it should get steeper as income goes up.
  Rich guy absolutely does not need the bump in take home pay from hitting the cap. Poor guy definitely could use the extra income early income not being taxed.
  I'm just so mad all the time about people licking the boots of the rich. They don't need breaks! They're rich! They're going to be fine!
  
  Plus those drivers licenses …. Are issued by states and until recently had no real value as a national id. Now we are trying to phase in “Real ID” where those drivers licenses have to meet national standards and be verifiable as a national ID. It hasn’t gone well and keeps getting pushed back, so we’ll see if it really happens this time.
  As the forcing function they are requiring Real ID to fly even within the country. Soon you will no longer be able to use a normal drivers license.
  But my state screwed up where I paid extra to get a Real ID compliant license but after a mess of lost paperwork they issued a standard license. So I’m not Real ID compliant and they say I can’t get one until my next renewal in a couple years, which means I soon can’t use that as ID to fly. To add to this mess, that means my only alternative is using a passport, even for local flights. And many Americans don’t have passports.
- Very explicitly no, but it's the closest thing so we use it as though it were. It's supposed to be your identifier for our national pension program and nothing more. But any time we propose a national id for benefits and general ease of use purposes people lose their shit, despite often not being the people protesting the existence of the nsa or the patriot act.

Yeah, but who cares? I mean, really? I haven't had a physical copy of my social security card in ages, since it disintegrated in my wallet in college. Memorize the number and move on with your day.
- Most employers will request the original copy to make their own copies from as part of any onboarding process. Just knowing the numbers isn't enough.
  
  I have my paper one in a safety deposit box, with my original birth certificate. I carry around a useless laminated copy for normal BS.
  And yes, I say useless laminated, because for some dumb fucking reason, the US issues paper social security cards, and cannot be used officially if you do so. No government agency will accept it, because they expect a piece of paper to last 70+ years like dumb fucks.
  
  I wouldn’t say most, most will just ask for your SSN. They absolutely do not need the card for any reason whatsoever. If a job asked me to provide it I just wouldn’t take that job lol.
  
  Yep, my job now was not going to let me work until I brought it in. Had to drive 5 hours in one night lol
  
  Really? I've only had one job that required my social security card. I've worked in multiple school districts, as well as food and hospitality jobs and only 1 of the school districts wanted to see my social security card.
  
  Usually a birth certificate will suffice if you don't have one. They have to verify they can legally employ you. I didn't have my social for awhile and used my birth certificate. Became a problem when Puerto Rico invalidated all birth certificates though for a time. Had one idiot say they couldn't accept a PR birth certificate for citizenship once though.
  
  Social Security Card is one form of identification but not the only form.
  Passport is a great one because it doesn't require additional verification.
  I-9 has all the ways you can verify.
  
  I’ve changed a few employers and so far no one has ever asked me to bring my physical SSN to show them
- I had to get mine replaced to get a passport. That was ten years ago, and the passport just expired. I've got 9 replacements left and I just turned 60, so I think I'm good.

Well shit, I’m on # 2
- Imma steal your cards

I had to replace mine once. Put it in a safer spot and haven’t had to move it since. I can’t imagine what someone is doing where they’d need to replace a social security card 10 times.
- Some people don't live in the same place all of their lives.
- Some people are dumb and carry it in their wallet.

What happens if someone gets married a lot and keeps needing a new card with new name?
Now I'm wondering what the maximum number of times someone has been married. Elizabeth Taylor was married 8 times (twice to Burton, so she could have reused that one if she kept it) But if she took her husband's last name legally (while keeping her stage name) each time, she would have been pushing the limit, and over it if she went back to her maiden name, lost any cards, or didn't keep old ones... Or if her lawyers were like, don't change your name legally again after husband 5?
- I guess they're not replacement cards but newly issued ones
  
  Yeah I think this is to counter someone selling theirs on purpose replacing it. Guess the number is just honestly an estimate of what could reasonably happen, but then it's still 3 a year. But then again you couldn't definitely have such bad luck to lose your wallet thrice a year.
  Anyways, I'd assume that if (well before the US went totally mad) there was an actually reasonable case of someone encountering the limit who clearly wasn't a fraudster, it'd probably be amended.
  But that's just my cursed optimism, probably doesn't reflect reality.

After that they come round and tattoo it onto your forehead.

hopefully all record of replacements will seem gay for some reason and get scrubbed.
- "It's for TRANSactions? DEFUNDED!

Shiiiiiet I’m like 2-3 away probably lol

I learned this for my parents because they had to keep getting me new ones. They got my name incorrect 9 times, the social security office. So my parents kept going back and then they warned them I'm close to the limit. My mom and dad we're pissed because my parents didn't lose it the office kept making a mistake but it doesn't matter. Now my mom keeps it so it doesn't get lost.

The number's 10 now? It was 3

I never thought about it until retirement, but the only times I've ever been asked to show my Social Security card have been to get jobs. Since retirement I've had to show my Medicare card but never my SS even though I receive SS payments.

Is it not the same thing as Canadian SIN?
I don't understand how can you lose it? It's just a number. If you forget it, you can login into CRA (Canadian IRS) website and see it there and you can print it if you want for some reason.
- Its a number but also on a physical card. The physical card is often used as one form of proving you are who you say you are (like getting a license, passport, etc).
- That’s what I always wondered: the card is a simple printout with no security features, no real verification, no biometrics. In the current day especially, it would be trivial to print one indistinguishable from original. They have no value as an ID card, yet are somehow treated as if they were.
  The SS card doesn’t make sense as anything other than a reminder of your number, but it’s sometime treated as a form of ID. It just doesn’t make sense

I mean, the card isn't ID, and you should have your number memorized by now.

They upped the number to 10? Last time I had to replace mine (about 10-20 years ago), the limit was set to 3.
- 3 per year. 10 per lifetime. To my understanding that's been the standard since a limit was introduced.

167 comments