After phones became de-coupled from street addresses (landline), the whole system changed to do everything possible to identify who has what number. It may or may not have something to do with law enforcement requests for wire taps and metadata. You have to hand all this information over, even if you bring your own phone.
That said, burner phones with cash-paid SIMs are probably (?) still a viable workaround, however tedious.
Why does AT&T have customer SSNs?
I mean, I get that they need those in order to run credit checks… but once the credit check has been run they have no need to keep that data.
We need REAL data protection laws that make even the largest corporations afraid to keep user data for any longer than absolutely necessary.
ATT does financing for phones, etc. Presumably that is why.
Ok, so you need the SSN for the credit check and what else after?
To leak to criminals.
After phones became de-coupled from street addresses (landline), the whole system changed to do everything possible to identify who has what number. It may or may not have something to do with law enforcement requests for wire taps and metadata. You have to hand all this information over, even if you bring your own phone.
That said, burner phones with cash-paid SIMs are probably (?) still a viable workaround, however tedious.