SSN Check – How to Validate a Social Security Number

An SSN Check is one of the most common requests we get here at USA Trace.  Sometimes people want to verify that their own social security number is valid, while others want to check the SSN of someone else.

Social security numbers have become the most important identifying number for US citizens.  They are used for everything from taxes to criminal background checks.  Police and other agents can often find someone by social security number  and private investigators also know how to find someone with their social security number.

Whether you’re trying to find someone, learn more about someone, or want just want to know more about the information out there, there are definite ways to check an SSN (though there are some limitations).

Up until 2011, social security numbers were issued in a prescribed order with the first three digits (area numbers) being dedicated to different states. The groups of numbers that were issued each month in each state were actually published by the Social Security Administration, so – just using this public record information – it’s possible to run an instant SSN search to confirm the validity of the number, the issuing state, and the approximate year when it was issued.

If you’re trying to validate a social security number for an official purpose (employment, credit, housing, etc.), you’ll want to use the SSA’s Social Security Verification Service for your SSN check rather than our free tools below.

Otherwise, our SSN Validation tool should be the first stop for your SSN check.  Using the first five digits of an SSN (the last 4 can be any combination of 0001-9999), you can instantly determine if the number you have is valid. If you want to go further, you can check to ensure that the issuing state and the year line up with what you’re expecting:

Looking to go more in depth? You can get a complete background check by SSN using our SSN search option below. With your background check, you’ll receive all available public records – including criminal records, marriage records, divorce records, judgments, liens – and an address and phone number history (along with a current address, phone number and email) as well as a list of relatives. You can get some of this information for free using our form below; otherwise, it costs about $10. Even if you don’t have an SSN, you can get the same kind of background check using just a name and last known City and State with our People Search option:

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