Want to know who voluntarily spends hours of their solar day scouring the Social Security Administration'south website? People who get paid to. That includes me and the iv remaining members of the SSA.gov tech support squad who didn't get jobs at LinkedIn or Google during the 2013 budget sequestration.

The reason I take 23 tabs in my Spider web browser open to the recesses of SSA.gov correct now is that I drew the long straw. Yes, I landed the cushy assignment of searching for "fun facts about Social Security," while my pals and boyfriend Motley Fool Answers podcasters Robert Brokamp and Alison Southwick are stuck researching the boring stuff for our next episode -- subjects like when you should outset taking Social Security benefits, the risks to time to come benefits, and Chris Christie's latest proposal for Social Security reform. I know: Snooze-o-rama, correct?

A social security card lying among assorted bills

Who says Social Security can't be a fun topic? Image source: Getty Images.

So much to run across and exercise at SSA.gov!
Anytime you lot, too, may need to devote hours of your 24-hour interval (probable unpaid -- pitiful) clicking around the Social Security Assistants'due south website to practice some not-so-fun things similar:

  • Change or correct your name on your card
  • Calculate your retirement benefits in detail (or go only a rough estimate of what you might receive)
  • Utilize for retirement or Medicare benefits or inability benefits
  • Get a record of your earnings
  • Explore the Windfall Elimination Provision, whatever that is
  • Bank check to meet if Social Security will even so be when you're finally eligible to collect it

Y'all might find the same pages helpful. I tin can't confirm their utility, every bit I only skimmed them for "fun facts" before immediately moving on.

I can tell you lot that "Where tin can I go a copy of the Death Master File?" does not contain fifty-fifty one Call of Duty cheat lawmaking. But the Life Expectancy Calculator is a hitting at birthday parties and family reunions.

For the really riveting stuff, nevertheless, you take to dig a fleck deeper.

Fun facts that'll make y'all the life of the party
As a public service (and a way to bring meaning to those hours I could accept spent watching videos of baby animals learning to walk), I present nine things you might not have known about Social Security, straight from the source. Share them proudly, and you'll be the life of every cocktail party!

i. Social Security numbers were introduced in 1936 to keep track of hobos
At least that'due south what it sounds like to me. Apparently, Uncle Sam needed a system to keep track of the earnings histories of U.S. workers (many of whom enjoyed taking free train rides to less destitute locales featured in Ken Burns documentaries) and then that they could do good from President Franklin D. Roosevelt's newly launched Social Security program.

2. If y'all were born earlier 2011, your Social Security number was generated using a arrangement that takes 12,052 words to explicate
But I'll do information technology in 131:

If you're over the historic period of four and take a Social Security number, hither's how your 9-digit number came to be:

  • The outset three numbers reflect the zip code of the Social Security part that issued information technology, near likely near where you were born if your parents got you straight into the system after your birth. Like zip codes, the numbers increase from e to w across the U.S.
  • The next ii numbers are your "group number" (between 01 and 99 and subject field to some complex and not-so-fun rules I won't go into here). They were assigned in the order in which applicants applied for a number in a particular expanse.
  • The last iv numbers -- the serial number -- were doled out as each Social Security Number application was candy.

3. Your kids are less likely to take their numbers hacked
Nowadays, Social Security numbers are randomized and comprise none of the old markers, because hackers accept trained computers to make alarmingly accurate guesses as to what your number might be with merely a few pieces of data.

four. 001-01-0001 is the card with the lowest possible number
Information technology was issued to Grace D. Owen from Concord, N.H. I wonder how soon after the SSA started publishing that particular fun fact the identity theft industry was born. Speaking of which...

v. More than 40,000 people have claimed 078-05-1120 every bit their number
It's the number issued to Hilda Schrader Whitcher, who was a secretarial assistant at a wallet manufacturing company in Lockport, Northward.Y. A vice president at the company decided to illustrate their wallets' utility past using a sample Social Security card. (Not a bad idea, as it was 1938, and Social Security cards were pretty new.) However, unlike the imitation cardboard iPhones and Kindles used to prove how that Hello Kitty instance fits on your device, the fake card in the wallet contained Hilda's real Social Security number. And it was for sale at Woolworth's and other department stores across the country. Over time, the SSA had to straighten out more than 40,000 incorrect earnings reports attributed to Hilda's number, some equally contempo as 1977.

Hilda didn't invite the scrutiny. Just several years agone, the CEO of LifeLock (a company that sells fraud-protection products for consumers) did and so by plastering his Social Security number on billboards and buses. That promotional stunt also didn't work out quite equally planned.

6. When y'all die, your number dies, never to be issued again
The SSA says there are plenty of numbers to last for generations to come. On a similar note, if yous're assigned a new number, the old ane will nonetheless follow you to the grave. It will be cross-referenced and on record with your new one so that all your earnings nether both numbers are credited to your proper name.

vii. You can lose your bill of fare 10 times during your lifetime (but only three times in a unmarried year) and still get a gratis replacement carte
After that, it'll cost y'all to get a new card. Legal name changes and stuff like that don't count toward the limits.

8. You tin can alter your number if the digits you were assigned contain bad mojo
If yous tin prove that you have religious or cultural problems with certain numbers, you can request a new number. You lot'll have to provide documentation from your religious group.

Hither are other adequate reasons to become a new number:

  • You're experiencing ongoing issues afterward being the victim of identity theft
  • Your number (and the power for people to employ it to rails you) leads to harassment or endangers your life
  • Someone else is using the same number (e.chiliad., your roommate or evil twin) or seems to be using the aforementioned number (e.chiliad., it's being mistakenly entered into various systems because someone with a similar number has bad handwriting that leads it to be misinterpreted every bit your number)

nine. In prison house? No problem!
SSA.gov has a pamphlet for you!

This has been Fun Facts About Social Security, Social Security cards and numbers edition. Craving more? Stay tuned. I've got pages and pages of research coming your way!

This article represents the opinion of the writer, who may disagree with the "official" recommendation position of a Motley Fool premium informational service. We're motley! Questioning an investing thesis -- even one of our ain -- helps us all think critically about investing and make decisions that help u.s.a. get smarter, happier, and richer.