Search engine giant Google seems to be extremely concerned with children's social security information these days. The all time favorite search engine and internet entrepreneur has sponsored a contest for children in order to amass bits of personal information regarding the child.
Google's high profile art contest, "Doodle-4-Google" received 33,000 submissions this past year alone. The contest was established to encourage the creativity of our nation's young people by evaluating drawings and art work sent to the company.
The contest may sound exciting and fruitful until one realizes that with the submission of the art work the child's parent has to complete an application form which requests some substantial personal information. The preliminary parent consent form requires various bits of information such as the child's place of birth, their date of birth and the last four digits of the youngster's Federal Social Security number.
Social Security Numbers are traditionally composed of a series of carefully established codes. The numbers are broken up into groups of digits such as 123-45-6789. The first three digits signify the state or the area where your social security number was first issued and is frequently determined by where and when you were born. These numbers are referred to as the "area number". The second sets of numbers are called the "group numbers" and really have no established geographical or material significance. Lastly, we have the third set numbers which is simply a numerical sequence of digits used to identify your particular number.
Suppose I was born in New Hampshire and the last four of my Social Security number was 8079. By knowing that New Hampshire SS numbers are between 001 and 003 I just about have the first three numbers. What we have here is:
001-??-8079
002-??-8079
003-??-8079
As you can readily see once someone knows your last four numbers and your birth location it is only a matter of time before they can figure out your complete SS number since that leaves only two digits to be determined. Since we now live in an age of supercomputers that would not take long to validate in the least.
When Google requests your last four digits of your social security number, an unscrupulous person could call your bank and request information from your account. This is a very common means by which the bank confirms your identify. Add to that the additional information requested of the parents themselves and the child and we see a prime candidate for identify theft. Think for one moment to one of the most commonly asked questions asked if you lose your password to a website. That's right it is, "what city were you born in?"
When you know the person's place of birth along with the year of their birth you can easily guess at the first five digits of the Social security number. Once these figures have been determined you are afforded a treasury full of personal information. Coupled with various linked data bases the information obtained from the company could yield a wealth of marketing information. The question foremost on people's mind is why has Google tried to collect all this information?
Let's keep in mind that this is the forth year that the contest has run and that means that Google has collected personal information on children now for a straight four years in a row. Google representatives explain the rationale behind their request as a means of removing duplicates. They claim that by requesting the place of birth they can ensure that entries are submitted by American citizens and are actually eligible to enter the contest. Incidentally, using the city as a means of determining citizenship is a fallacy. The city or place of your birth actually has no correspondence with whether you are a US citizen or not. My youngest son was born in Germany on a military base. Since both my wife and I are American citizens he is naturally one as well. They state that the information is used for no other purpose and is deleted after verification.
It may appear that we are picking on Google here but trust me they are not the only ones doing this mining for personal information. I often caution my friends and family members about the hazards associated with Facebook, Twitter and other social networks. You can usually look forward to a daily barrage of requests from friends to play various online applications such as the horoscope or funny answers programs. The problem here is that each of these programs requests all kinds of personal information about you. Once provided this information never disappears and will be there forever and only adds further data to your online ID file.
We often worry about the runaway invasion of our personal information from our federal government but perhaps we need to be concerned with private industry as well. With close ties associated with Google and the White house it should prove to be no surprise. Who knows perhaps in the not to far off future Google and their leaders may decide to fund a private army and become a world power. They are already taking names and making lists. Couple that with Wal-Mart bar code systems and their private security forces and our future could look bleak!
By Joseph Parish
Copyright @2011 Joseph Parish
http://www.survival-training.info
