A question arose in our office this morning concerning Social Security Numbers.  Do the numbers ever get reassigned or re-used?  My understanding was that they did not.  A colleague said that they did but 50 years after their death and only if there were no descendents.  This seemed odd to me and, being righteous almost to a fault, I decided to do a quick search. 

Within a few minutes, I found my way to the Social Security’s official web site and searched for “do social security numbers get re-assigned” and found the answer; “No. We do not reassign a Social Security number (SSN) after the number holder's death.”  In fact, not only have they not run out but, according to them, they have “enough new numbers for several generations into the future with no changes in the numbering system.”

Well there you have it, straight from the horse’s mouth.