Social security numbers and iphones

Paranoia is a good thing.

However, and I don't mean this as an insult, I'd suggest you take off your rose-colored glasses.

I used to buy stocks and did give my social security number to the stock broker banking service. I thought a bank would be a safe place to put my information. Years after I quit that broker and closed my account I received a letter from yet another stock broker banking company saying their computers had been compromised and information, including my social security number, had been hacked. I followed up because I couldn't believe this company, who I had never dealt with, had my personal information including my social security number. It turns out the banker that I had used to hold my account money had been bought out by the other company. Although my account had been closed years earlier, part of what the new company bought was my old private information that they were still holding on me.

Fortunately, as far as I know, the hacker must have been after other information because he (or she) apparently never used the information to harm me.

Richard

You guys seem to be making my point for me. Yes, AT&T can do business in some other way rather than by requiring my social security number. It is just a matter of inconvenience for them to do so. They probably won't do it the other way.

I'll have to do without an iPhone. They'll have to do without my business. Okay. But I think they may be underestimating the amount of business they are losing - and Apple, too, indirectly, may be underestimating the amount of business lost. I'd bet 1 in 10 people are like me in this regard. Anyway, I'm pretty sure that is the case of my neighbors in small town America (about 60,000 population in my North Carolina home town).

Richard

I once did the same with my personal checks.
Richard

Note it says, that while it's not required, they have no obligation for them to provide services.

That would have to be decided in a legal case - which I personally would not undertake. However, people used to believe if you owned a business you could serve or reserve the right not to serve, anyone. In civil rights court that was shown not to be the case.

Richard

"an implanted chip... when that happens we won't need a social security number anymore."

Wow, times they are a'changing.

When the social security law was passed, the law itself stated it could never be used for such purposes of identification. That part of the law is unchanged but now simply ignored. The reason these stipulations were included in the original law was governmental sensitivity for the preservation of integrity and esteem for the individual. It was a symbol of the American way, specifically our belief in the rights and privacy of the individual - versus the collective impersonalization. That was a main thrust of why America was always opposed to communist way of doing things.

When Americans went to the movies post WWII, they were repulsed by the Nazi's demand "Let me see your papers!" In 1964 in the movie Dr. Zhivago, Lara was lost, "a nameless number that simply disappeared in one of Stalin's concentration camps." Now we're talking about GPS numbers imbedded in American citizens's skin like the impersonal numbers tatooed on concentration camp victims.

No we won't need social security numbers when we're issued GPS tags.

Excuse me for being the one throwing the cold water wake-up call.

Richard

You wrote "But hey, there is like a %0.05 of the paranoid population who can't get an iPhone, it's ok. P.S. And yeah, keep telling Alltel that you got service without a SSN, get someone fired, someone who helped you out before, that's nice..."

I'm sure %0.05 is an accurate statistic. Where did you come up with that? Secondly, remember, paranoia is a good thing. Third, why would you helping me would get anyone fired? They didn't do anything wrong. They just researched deeper into their job and learned what was really possible.

Finally, remember company policy is not the same as "LAW". Company policy is just a prescribed way (let me parse that for you- prescribed = "written out ahead of time" so the person at the lowest level has a guideline). It is not the "only" way.

Richard

You wrote: "With 10 million iPhones sold (paraphrase, I doubt they care)

I wonder if that 10 million is in the U.S. or worldwide? If it is just the U.S. that means 29 out of 30 people in the U.S. do NOT own an iPhone (population 2006, 300 million).

If it is world wide then the concentration is absolutely pathetic.

In any event you've described in your reply an attitude that is the Achilles Hill of any corporation that becomes too large - lack of concern about the individual customer. I hope Apple has not become that large, yet.

Richard