SsnValidator

DESCRIPTION:

ssn_validator is a ruby gem that validates whether an SSN has likely been issued or not. What exactly does that mean “likely” been issued? We can’t tell for sure if an SSN belongs to a particular person, but knowing the “rules” on how the social security administration assigns numbers, we can determine whether a number has ever been issued or not.

ssn_validator started as a need for the company I work for, Clarity Services Inc. Incredibly, we couldn’t find an existing gem or service that provided what we needed. Since we were going to have to roll our own solution, we decided to create a gem out of it and share it with the community. Much thanks goes to the management at Clarity Services Inc. for allowing this code to be open sourced.

FEATURES/PROBLEMS:

What it can do:

Validates the likelyhood that an SSN has been issued to someone.
Checks the Death Master File if the SSN belongs to a dead person.  This will require you to purchase the dmf data from https://dmf.ntis.gov

What it cannot do:

Validate that an SSN actually belongs to a particular person.

SYNOPSIS:

Just instantiate the object with an SSN.

ssn = SsnValidator::Ssn.new('123-45-6789')

Can also pass optional validation date, so you can see if the SSN would have been on the DMF file as of that date. Defaults to today. Pass a date or a string that can be evalutated by Date.parse Be aware that the as of date is the date you updated your local DMF table, not when the SSN was actually added to the DMF. If you update your local table monthly, then the 2 should be equivelant.
```
ssn = SsnValidator::Ssn.new('123-45-6789', '2006-01-01')
```

Then check if it’s valid

ssn.valid?
ssn.death_master_file_hit?

ssn.valid? only checks to see if the number itself is valid.  Check the death_master_file_hit? method
as well to verify the ssn does not belong the the deceased.

The death_master_file_hit? method will only return true of false if you have purchased the dmf data and
loaded it into your database.  There is a generator and rake task to facilitate this, but you'll have
to purchase the data yourself at https://dmf.ntis.gov.

You can check the errors array to see why it’s not valid.
```
ssn.errors
```

REQUIREMENTS:

Rails 3.0.0 or greater

INSTALL:

To install the gem:
```
sudo gem install ssn_validator
```
To create the necessary db migration, from the command line, run:
```
rake ssn_validator:install:migrations
```
Require the gem in your Gemfile:
```
gem 'ssn_validator'
```

To load your table with the current SSN data, from the command line, run:

rake ssn_validator:update_data

* The SSN data is updated monthly, so you'll want to run this rake task monthly to keep your validations accurate.

If you’ve purchased the death master file data, create the death_master_files migration:
```
rails generate death_master_file_migration
```

To load the dmf files you receive from ntis:

rake ssn_validator:death_master_file:load_file PATH='path/to/file' AS_OF='2009-03-01'

* You'll need to pass in the full path to where the file is on disk.  You'll also need
  to pass in the date this file's data are as of in the format yyyy-mm-dd.

* This task must be used to load the initial file you receive from ntis on CD.  It can optionally be used
  to load the monthly update files you download from the website.  If you manually download the update files,
  you do not need to add your user name and password to the environment.rb file.  For a more automated approach
  to loading the update files, add your user name and password to the environment.rb file and use the 2nd rake task.

To load the monthly updates from the ntis website: