In Canada it is pretty much verboten for anyone other than financial agencies (including agencies such as the Canada Revenue Agency and the Canada Pension Plan) to ask for, much less demand, a person's Social Insurance Number (equivalent to the SSN in the US) — and that goes especially for health card ID. Of course, if you choose to give away that information, you may do so.
iirc, the same basic laws exist in the USA. Years ago, when social security was new, the government drilled it into your head. There are only
four people that need your SSN besides the government: (1) the person that does your taxes if you don't do them yourself, (2) your banker (and by extension anyone that does bank-liken business, like your stock broker, credit card company, that has to report income to the feds), (3) your employer (again for income reporting) and (4) your lawyer. Federal law prohibits anyone from being denied service for failure to disclose your SSN to them. They can ask, but you don't have to give, and they can't deny you service as a result.
Right now the only "fringe case" that I know of is credit report. If you want to get credit, you really need to provide your SSN. You can decline, and they WILL try to run a credit check on you, but you are guaranteed to get a fairly low number returned as a result. Your credit history is tied (via the banks and credit card companies, above) to your SSN so they have no other easy way to access your credit data. But in many of those cases they're going to be entitled to get your SSN anyway (if applying for a credit card for example) so it's not too surprising.
Story time: I was with my grandmother one day many years ago when we were at a clothing store, and as she was making her purchase they of course offered her a store credit card. She filled out the app and left the SSN field blank, just like she was taught so many years ago. This really threw the young checkers for a loop, and they went back and forth for some time arguing over it, insisting that was required to issue her a store card. Finally they were on the phone with corporate, and a few transfers later they learned that no, they cannot legally require her to give her SSN. They weren't running a credit report - they'd give a store charge card to pretty much
anyone that applied. They had to dig into the rulebook on their end and were surprised to find they had this scenario planned for. They ran a program on their end that generated a unique number to use in place of the SSN. This was the first time anyone involved that day had encountered this scenario. Everyone there up to that date had just willingly given their SSN to the department store, which was totally unnecessary.
So I got to thinking about that. I looked at my drivers license. My license number WAS my SSN. And this is the ID that people were starting to ask for for stuff. Several places I'd written a check to wanted to see my drivers license before accepting the check. Most of them wrote something down off it onto my check. I realized at that time they were recording my SSN. **mind blow** Technically they could not legally require my SSN as a condition to accepting my check, but they COULD require me to show them my ID, which had my SSN on it...... hmf.
I asked the DMV next time I was in there and they said they could, on request, generate a unique number to use in place of my SSN on my drivers license. By the time it came around for renewal though, they were issuing those numbers to
everyone, so no one's license had their SSN on it. I looked around and found that MOST states were doing that, but a few at that time were still using your SSN for your DL number. I think this was about the time that identity theft was just getting onto everyone's radar.
