Yahoo! Requires SSN?

wesmills writes "In case you haven't heard, Yahoo! Bills is the newest way to pay your bills online. Considering my bank's online abilities are somewhat limited, I decided to look at Yahoo!'s offering. On their signup page, you must enter the requisite name, address, phone number, bank routing information...and SSN? My question was, and is, why does Yahoo! need my SSN to mail checks for me?" Click below for more...

"Would it be possible, as has been discussed on Slashdot before to not enter a number (I entered all zeroes), or to bypass this restriction? I posed that question, to their feedback form, and here's what I got back:

To: wesmills@telebot.net
From: customer_service@yahoo.com
Subject: Re: Feedback Form Inquiry

Unfortunately, there is no way to bypass the SSN requirement.

Thank you,
Yahoo! Support

OK, so what's the deal here, and are there any ways to get companies like Yahoo! and so forth to lighten up? It really galls me to see them requesting information that they (should) know they don't need! Never have I needed my SSN to mail a check to my VISA company. Heck, they don't care if my sister or mother does it. So, what's your take on this? "

My take is pretty simple. Yahoo does not need your SSN to pay bills for you (electronic funds transfers can be done solely with your account number and bank's routing number). Yahoo probably wants your SSN so that they can compare your online profile with your credit history, then give your address to targeted advertisers, who will send you junk mail to your home address, depending on what kind of bills you are paying through Yahoo's service. Being able to link your bill-paying to a specific SSN should allow much higher rates when advertising to you. Yahoo has no legal inhibitions against disclosing your SSN to anyone it feels like, "privacy policy" or no "privacy policy", so if you don't want your SSN being passed around the internet, don't give it out. -- michael

Comments

SSN == Financal tracking (fraud, BAD CHECKS, etc!)

[Seth Finkelstein]

Yahoo does not need your SSN to pay bills for you ...

Well, technically, it doesn't NEED it, but not having it is going to exclude them from interconnecting to the whole financial tracking structure and bad-check tracing databases. That would be an absolutely insane thing to do when starting up any sort money-handling organization (cypherpunk black-market cryptoanarchists excepted). Forget targeting advertising, this is money flow we're talking about.

You don't put an SSN on a check to a credit-card company because the bank has your SSN and so does the credit-card company. The exchange is between two corporations both of which already know your SSN. In this case, Yahoo is being asked to act as an financial intermediary, and almost any such organization will want your SSN.

Which is not to say they won't use it for lots of other stuff, but there's MUCH more going on than advertising.

Reference:

Many banks send the names, addresses, and SSNs of people whose accounts have been closed for cause to a company called ChexSystem. ChexSystem keeps a database of people whose accounts have been terminated for fraud or chronic insufficient funds in the past 5 years.

SSN FAQ: Private requests for your SSN

- The Boston Lunatic