SSN as an ID? How Quaint.
Although it should be common knowledge that using the SSN for identification is a bad idea, companies are not prohibited from asking for your SSN [1] and using it as part of an identifier. And some still do.
For example, I recently set up cable service for a bundled TV and Internet package. The phone sales rep insisted that all customers had to provide a valid SSN; I spent a good ten minutes trying to elucidate why. The final reason seemed to be that the cable company (call them Comwarner) still uses the SSN as the primary customer identifier and have no plans to change this. The reason I was given for the actual use was to combine it with the customer name and check for deadbeat ex-customers trying to sign up again. I also assume that Comwarner’s actual database schema probably includes some auto-generated customer identification string, and either the sales rep never sees it (instead, he claimed the system only displays the last 4 digits) or didn’t care to tell me that such a number existed when I asked.
It seems as if signing up a new customer would be the perfect time to switch over to a new ID system in which unique customer identifiers are generated. Unfortunately, nobody has a really good system for helping customers manage all these new unique identification numbers.
I could have easily supplied a fake SSN at that point, but I did not, because I had a sneaking suspicion of what would happen next…
Part of the TV service was the option to have DVR instead of a regular cable box. In order not to pay a hefty deposit, however, they run an “instant credit check” on you. Had I supplied a fake SSN or one that didn’t gel with my name, I would be out a chunk of change, or not be able to automatically record the entire season of…whatever I don’t actually watch anyway.
Private companies are not the Social Security Administration. Doctors, dentists, and utilities do not need a string issued for a specific government retirement program in order to provide service. They might think they do, and the folks on the front lines charged with the responsibility of asking you for this information
are not the ones that created the policy.
