The humble dog tag or the military identification tag that is issued to all soldiers in the U.S. military is finally getting an update after more than 40 years. In a news update from the Army.mil website, the U.S. Army published a new Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-8-14 Nov. 30, detailing procedures on replacing Soldiers' Social Security numbers with their Department of Defense identification numbers.

The change to the dog tags issued will not happen overnight and the new dog tags will be issued on a “per need basis” or prioritizing those who are going on deployment.

According to U.S. Army Human Resources Command Soldiers Programs Branch Chief, Michael Klemowski, "This change is not something where Soldiers need to run out and get new tags made. We are focusing first on the personnel who are going to deploy. If a Soldier is going to deploy, they are the first ones that need to have the new ID tags."

With rampant identify theft happening especially online, the change is to prevent misuse of information of the information embossed on the dog tags. At present, the dog tags show the name, Social Security Number, Blood Type, and Religion of the service person.

"I think removing the social will help," Klemowski added. "If you find a pair of lost ID tags you can pretty much do anything with that person's identity because you now have their blood type, their religion, you have their social, and you have their name. The only thing missing is their birth date and you can usually get that by Googling a person."

However, changing the dog tags, no matter how simple the tags are, is no laughing matter. The U.S. Army uses several systems that are tied to the Social Security number of service personnel and they have to be reconfigured to work with one another and with the DoD Id Number.

Eventually, they see that the steps will soon allow them to phase out the Social Security number and for the also a step in securing the privacy and identity of the soldier from being misused.