All Americans should have frozen their credit years ago.

If this is US social security numbers, they only have 9 digits so there can't be billions of them.

They get reused. Also:

About 52% of the records had unique SSNs

https://www.ssa.gov/history/hfaq.html :

Q20: Are Social Security numbers reused after a person dies?

A: No. We do not reassign a Social Security number (SSN) after the number holder's death. Even though we have issued over 453 million SSNs so far, and we assign about 5 and one-half million new numbers a year, the current numbering system will provide us with enough new numbers for several generations into the future with no changes in the numbering system.

Weird, I was quite confident in that memory. Thanks for the link.

How exactly do you have "billions" of Soc Sec numbers when they're nine digits?

Around 450 million numbers have been issued, but each series is comprised of 9 numbers. Therefore 4.1 billion numbers have been issued. I'll be here all week.

I am confused. I distinctly remember news stories about us running out of ss#s. I remember stories of people getting the same number. Wtf?

They get recycled. Not saying this isn't hyperbole, but it's the fact that those numbers are attached to legal names (even if the person is deceased) that's problematic.

According to SSA they have issued under 500m SSNs and they are not reassigned after death. How have BILLIONS been found?

To add to this: less than 1B US citizens have ever existed since the founding of the US - estimable to about 500M-600M

Its probably a mix of SSNs and EINs, there is no limit to the amount of EINs you can have. Except for the fact they will only issue one a day to a person.

They used to be geocoded, and Florida did run out of their original set of numbers at one point, so it was given a new block (585-595)

The article says more clearly "2.7 billion records with Social Security numbers." The author goes on to say he found 4 records with a friend's data but in those 4 records were 3 different SSNs. He called the friend and confirmed that one of them was his actual SSN. I guess someone was auto-linking names and SSNs for ID theft purposes and getting it wrong sometimes.

There were rules for how numbers were issued. You could tell where and when someone was born based on their number. Im unsure if it was changed, but I can see how high population areas could run out of their quota and need a new block