Shortly before BBVA closed them, I was in a back-and-forth to open an account with Simple.
First, my ID was too shiny, then it wasn't black and white, then it wasn't color, then they wanted a picture of my apartment building, then ...
it was just on and on and on for three weeks. It got to the point where I asked what exactly they wanted and they literally told me that they cannot tell me because it would allow me to commit fraud. I asked if I could talk directly to their fraud team to figure out what exactly: nope. Can't do that, they can't talk to you.
So I was expected to either read their minds or play infinite whack-a-mole with them where they say one thing in one email then say the opposite in the next.
This achievement then unlocks Privacy technology.
Currently, PII must be stored as plaintext. Required for matching records across systems.
Once UUIDs are used, all data at rest, at the field level, can be encrypted.
cite: Book Translucent Databases 2nd ed.
They have refused to provide me service if I don't give my SSN.
To get around it, I've had to open business accounts with my EIN.
That being said, you are right, there are prepaid options and postpaid with a deposit ($50) that can put you outside of this SSN requirement on T-Mobile. I guess you have to know to ask for them. It is for credit, that's the only reason they can ask for your SSN.
Everything is credit based now, and for some people their phone bill might even be their first positive (or negative) mark on a credit score rating.
I have no idea why it would be to the advantage of a business like T-mobile to get you on a postpaid plan when there is no possibility of running up your bill. It's still the option they push on hardest when you walk up to the storefront.
The credit model is the default model. That was my point. I don't know that I had a point.
You shouldn't need to maintain a credit account just to keep a phone number, but I guess it's real estate and that's valuable, they will put it back into the pool if you ever stop paying the bill. I haven't had to deal with these kind of problems myself for a long time, but the pain is still fresh.
Many places it is to prevent abuse.
I don't think I have been able yo legally get a phone number in Norway without identifykng myself for years.
Maybe if you go to a lawyer they can sort something, but that will be another league for most of us.
There are, of course, easily added forms of additional verification - for example, Stripe just added their Identity service which lets you take a picture of your driver's license and then match the image against a selfie. But that puts "friction" in front of the application process, so most banks don't do something like this unless other signals make them think the application has a high fraud risk.
If basically everyone's Name, SSN, DoB and Address is easily viewable public info, this will all change.