Hector Davie had his tongue in his cheek, but need not be too concerned over identity theft, as the new NHS numbers with no externally discernable pattern have been in use for some time, having been issued directly to the people concerned. If the NHS needs to find your number, they go on DOB, name(s), and address(es) normally, and who your last doctor was. Being able to decode wartime ID numbers neither helps nor hinders the task of finding a present day NHS number. If you told an NHS provider your old number they would not know what to do with it now. 99% of times, just knowing your old doctors details is enough to register at a new doctor, and with the scrapping of the most recent ID card scheme, there is no widespread use of an ID number, except for the National Insurance number, used for everything with a bearing on taxation. This has a date element in it but is rather fuzzy, and is not as far as I know issued at birth. On 11 July 2014 10:40:05 Hector Davie <hectord@sunrise.ch> wrote: > David Henwood has a good point - that these numbers provide a clue to > people's location in September 1939 (or to their district of birth if > born after that date). I can offer my own number, COPG256, having been > born in Guildford in the fourth quarter of 1941. I note however that on > the actual card, the letters are written separated by full stops > (C.O.P.G.), so it might not be that CO is Surrey. > > One suspects that the code is fairly easily crackable (and carries the > sinister idea of being able to generate many people's NHS numbers by > simply taking data from FreeBMD). > > Hector Davie > (And PS (pace Iago) - who steals my identity steals trash...) > > ------------------------------- > To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to > SOG-UK-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes > in the subject and the body of the message