For all the concern about identity theft, researchers say there's a surprisingly easy way for the technology-savvy to figure out the precious nine digits of Americans' Social Security numbers. It's good that we found it before the bad guys, Alessandro Acquisti of Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh said of the method for predicting the numbers.
For all the concern about identity theft, researchers say there's a surprisingly easy way for the technology-savvy to figure out the precious nine digits of Americans' Social Security numbers. "It's good that we found it before the bad guys," Alessandro Acquisti of Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh said of the method for predicting the numbers. Acquisti and Ralph Gross report in Tuesday's edition of "Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences" that they were able to make the predictions using data available in public records.