I also remember some years ago that Prudential had their own version of
COBOL that allowed them to pack character (maybe just alpha?) fields, so
they could probably add an alpha to the SSN numbering scheme without
issue. I don't know if they still use it, and really hurt my brain
trying to figure out how to pack alpha values.
Billy
------ Original Message ------
From: "Phil Smith III" <[email protected]>
To: [email protected]
Sent: 4/22/2020 12:11:41 PM
Subject: Re: Here we go again;
As others have suggested, many companies do still have SSNs stored as packed
decimal. So sure, a namespace expansion is possible, but it's a bigger change
than one might think, however it's done. I've even seen at least one company
who stored them as binary! I sure hope someone got a big bonus for saving that
byte...
Peter Farley wrote:
There are also many non-human entities like corporations that use the same SSN
value space.
There are a LOT of those . . . and they spring up and fade away at a rate far
higher than human births and deaths.
They use the same namespace--that is, if your SSN is 123-45-6789, an estate or business
could also have that number. Since they're uses for different things, it's more that they
happened (!) to choose the same format than that they're "the same". (And
actually they're theoretically formatted differently: an EIN is xx-xxxxxxx vs. the SSN
xxx-xx-xxxx, not that most folks store them with the hyphens.)
...phsiii
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