Despite the fact that it’s patently illegal for most organizations that demand your Social Security Number to do so, many have standardized to your SSN as your id number. Some, like the DC Department of Motor Vehicles, have copped to the fact that “hey, we have computers! we can generate an account number for you!”
So with the prevalence of SSN use and the ability to just generate a random account number my dealings with the phone company still beg the question: why aren’t they using my phone number as my account number?