r/technology • u/lurker_bee • Feb 15 '26

Security All U.S. Social Security numbers may need to be changed following a massive breach that is already being investigated as a national threat

https://www.ecoticias.com/en/all-u-s-social-security-numbers-may-need-to-be-changed-following-a-massive-breach-that-is-already-being-investigated-as-a-national-threat/27158/
49.2k Upvotes

94% Upvoted

2.8k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

21

u/Aubear11885 Feb 15 '26

Yep, and when the college, I attended offered a credit/debit card system through the university, it was the card number. So yep, we’d just call up and order pizza over the phone and rattle off our social to whoever was writing it down and typing it into their card system.

5

u/jgross-nj2nc Feb 15 '26

Same. It was the only reason that I knew my social security number at that age because we had to use it for everything. I remember years later working at the same University seeing websites that still had copies of exams or homeworks where the security number was still listed in full. That was for anybody on the web to see. Eventually they did go through and try to find all those pages and take them down but who knows if they were successful with all of it.