I&#x27;ve gotten into so many arguments about how the first five digits of an SSN for nearly everyone born before 2011 (!), when they switched to a more pseudo-random algorithm, is reverse engineer-able and thus you should never, ever show the last four digits as that really is the only &quot;secret&quot; part of an SSN. This argument is a &quot;fun&quot; circular argument that typically goes &quot;Well, but if we only show the first five, many families can&#x27;t tell which social is whose because they all look so similar...&quot; &quot;Yes, because it was an algorithm! We should use something other than SSN to identify different people.&quot; &quot;But how will people <i>know</i> which SSN their account is connected to?&quot; &quot;Why is their SSN connected to the account at all?&quot; &quot;So they can identify their account!&quot; &#x2F;facepalm