I don't youtube.

My understanding is most other countries (and our credit card #'s) have ..self-identifying? ...some spiffy numbers built into them that cryptographically verify that they're not fakes, whereas the US's SSN is pretty much just an incremental number assignation and has zero additional info built into it.

Like I know sisters that have sequential SSN's because there was a snafu and they got assigned them at the same time, rather than when they each were born.

Of course, I'm entirely against the whole fucking idea of giving people a fucking barcode at all, but that's an idealogical argument for another time