[toss1]

And both were probably illegal at the time. When Social Security was created, people were concerned about it becoming a de-facto national ID system, and it was illegal to use SSNs as an ID for anything other than taxes and Social Security Biz.

Medical insurance companies commonly broke the law but skirted it by saying it was "optional", and of course not telling anyone about the option. At least several times when I applied for insurance, I filled in "Assign ID" and had to correct the first level agent who insisted that I needed to provide and SSN. Patiently insisting that they needed to escalate the call, the first higher-level agents who knew would immediately accept it.

This sort of sloppyness confusing an IDentifier with an authentication has now gotten us into a world of trouble.