I swear, CNet is one of the worst journalism outfits ever created. In yet another spat of anti-Apple hyperbole, they’re all up in arms over the fact that Apple and AT&T require your Social Security Number in order to activate your service. Apparently this is CNet’s first cell phone, or they’d know that every carrier requires this information in order to do a credit check. And, apparently they’ve not done their homework, or they’d know that you can refuse to give AT&T your SSN (thus rendering them unable to perform a credit check), but you’ll be required to fork up another God-knows-how-much as a deposit.
CNet, you suck, man. Seriously. You suck.
http://blogs.cnet.com/8301-13507_1-9739118-18.html?tag=rsspr.6195009&part=rss&subj=news
001 // Brian Ford // 07.05.2007 // 4:32 PM
Well, he gets a helluva lot wrong — it’s true. You cover the obvious aspects — the fact that ALL companies ask for this information in order to do a credit check.
The only thing I will give him is that it’s also true (as he mentions) that AT&T did give up the records of their customers without so much as a fight when the government made the request.
So, his article SHOULD be: “Can we trust AT&T with our private information — and what does it mean that 700,000 people did trust AT&T with their SSN last weekend?”
It shouldn’t be solely tied to the iPhone, either — one presumes that they ask for the same info when doing credit checks for ALL of their phones.
Unfortunately, coming from CNET — it comes off as a way to slam Apple (yet again) more than a real concern for the privacy of its customers.
But, still: Identify theft FUD drives me fucking insane and I tend to believe it’s way overblown.
002 // Grant Blakeman // 07.06.2007 // 10:06 AM
I switched to AT&T a couple weeks ago.
Of course they asked for my SS# for a credit check on my account creation - just like every other one of my utilities.
Every other carrier does the same - I’m not sure how CNET thinks this is news.
Jeff, you are so right - this is a new level of suckage in their coverage.