I've talked with a several SSA scammers over the past few days and I'll typically just pull a random SSN and DOB out of my ass. More than a few times, they say that the number is invalid and ask me to repeat/confirm it. At first I thought they were trying to weed out people who just came up with any random 9-digit number and who wouldn't be able to repeat it, but a few of them actually dug in their heels that the numbers were actually invalid. So I did some digging and it appears they might be using some online tools to check. Good news is, so can we.
Here's a social security number validator. It will tell you the state and date range of issue, along with whether the number actually exists or not:
https://www.ssn-check.org/verify/
This next resource from the SSA shows which leading three digit numbers were assigned to which states:
https://www.ssa.gov/employer/stateweb.htm
You can use the knowledge of both to test random numbers until you find one that works for your needs.
Just sharing this because it seems like scammers are using these or similar resources to verify incoming calls. I suppose that means we're having a positive effect because they're now trying to actively weed out the baiters, but several calls were shut down within a minute because they realized that I gave them a crap number and then just hung up-they didn't even try to argue with me.
Happy scamming!
