Social Security Validation is the process of determining whether the Social Security Number given by your applicant is in fact a valid number. Through this service we learn:

• If the Social Security Number was actually issued by the Social Security Administration
• If the number in question belongs to deceased person. Stolen identities are frequently revealed through this data alone.
• What state the number was issued in
• What year the number was issued

This is not the same as running a search through E-Verify, which can only be done post-hire, but the information gleaned from Social Security Validation is valuable indeed.