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25 July 2013

Where They Got Their Social Security Number

When searching the Social Security Death Index, avoid searching based on where the person was living when they applied for their number. While these locations usually are not wrong, it requires you to know where the person resided at the time the number was requested. Many who applied for numbers may have moved somewhere temporarily for work, only to live there for a few years and return "home" or move to a residence that became their permanent home.

And if you insist they lived in Iowa when they applied for their number and they obtained it while living a few months in Oklahoma, you aren't going to find the person for whom you are looking.

4 comments:

  1. Thank you for all these great tips, Michael!

    I would add that the last known address is not to be relied upon either. In my grandmother's SSDI entry, the last address listed is the place where her monthly checks were mailed---her daughter's home 30 miles away.

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  2. Or they were visiting. I lived in Minnesota when I applied for mine while I was visiting my aunt and her family in South Dakota :)

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  3. The first and second set usually indicates where they were when they applied.

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  4. Or military service. When I went to boot camp in Texas, many of the men in my outfit did not already have Social Security numbers. Dozens of them applied for Social Security Numbers and all of them received Texas numbers, despite the fact they were born elsewhere.

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