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