what are the components of a social security number ?

Answer 1

Information from (from http://www.ssa.gov/history/ssn/geocard.html)

The Social Security number is a nine-digit number in the format "111-11-1111." The number is divided into three parts.

The Area Number is assigned by the geographical region. Prior to 1975, cards were issued in local Social Security offices around the country and the Area Number represented the office code in which the card was issued. This did not necessarily have to be in the area where the applicant lived, since a person could apply for their card in any Social Security office. Since 1972, when SSA began assigning SSNs and issuing cards centrally from Baltimore, the area number assigned has been based on the ZIP code in the mailing address provided on the application for the original Social Security card. The applicant's mailing address does not have to be the same as their place of residence. Thus, the Area Number does not necessarily represent the State of residence of the applicant, either prior to 1972 or since.

Generally, numbers were assigned beginning in the northeast and moving westward, so that people on the east coast had the lowest numbers and those on the west coast had the highest numbers. As the areas assigned to a locality are exhausted, new areas from the pool are assigned, so some states have noncontiguous groups of numbers.

The middle two digits are the group number. They have no special geographic or data significance but merely serve to break the number into conveniently sized blocks for orderly issuance.

There is a theory that the two middle digits can be used to identify a person's ethnic background. This is debunked as an urban legend on snopes.com as well as on the Social Security Administration's website.

The group numbers range from 01 to 99. However, they are not assigned in consecutive order. For administrative reasons, group numbers are issued in the following order:

ODD numbers from 01 through 09
EVEN numbers from 10 through 98
EVEN numbers from 02 through 08
ODD numbers from 11 through 99
As an example, group number 98 will be issued before 11.

The last four digits are serial numbers. They represent a straight numerical sequence of digits from 0001-9999 within the group.

[edit] Valid SSNs
Currently, a valid SSN cannot have an area number above 772, the highest area number which the Social Security Administration has allocated.[3]

There are also special numbers which will never be allocated:

Numbers with all zeros in any digit group (000-xx-xxxx, xxx-00-xxxx, xxx-xx-0000).

Numbers of the form 666-xx-xxxx, probably due to the potential controversy (see Number of the Beast). Though the omission of this area number is not acknowledged by the SSA, it remains unassigned.

Numbers from 987-65-4320 to 987-65-4329 are reserved for use in advertisements [citation needed].

The Administration publishes the last group number used for each area number. Since group numbers are allocated in a regular (if unusual) pattern, it is possible to identify an unissued SSN that contains an invalid group number. Despite these measures, many fraudulent SSNs cannot easily be detected using only publicly available information.

Answer 2

9 numbers and 2 hyphens!

Answer 3

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