You can't go and get a drivers license (like she did) on the vague assumption that the SSN you chose might match someone of your geenral age and description when it is run through the state computer.
She bought an SSN.
Your made-up telephone numbers are no big deal to you when you are lying to a store clerk, but if it were the DMV or the IRS or some other authority with the ability to have you punished, you would not give a made-up number.
Especially if you were already a felon on the run.
You would have to give a plausible number that checked out upon further scrutiny.
I don’t think you understand what I’m saying. It isn’t that tough to figure out what the “template” SSN is and what it is based on. Just because you are 25 or 30 years old and in California in 1981 doesn’t mean you can’t have a SSN with a template from someone who was issued one in Maine in, say, 1972. You’re also making an erroneous assumption that there was ANY scrutiny of SSNs in 1981 or for a period after that.
I’m not comparing making up my phone numbers to using an illegal SSN. What I’m saying is that it isn’t (or wasn’t then) hard to learn the “template” then make up the few remaining numbers and it coincidentally was the same as someone who had that number. So it IS plausible. While you may be correct that she bought it, I don’t know why she’d lie about it now. Just not answer the question.