Comment by acdha

The problem isn’t the SSN but corporate responsibility shirking: they don’t want to check ID because that costs more, they want things like instant credit applications to allow impulse purchases, etc.

This seems to slowly be improving because so many people have been breached by now that they don’t enjoy the assumption of security. In the 90s, if they took you to court saying you weren’t paying a loan it’d be assumed that a crook wouldn’t have known your SSN but now it’s at least a lot more likely that nobody will believe that without additional proof.