[californical]

I never give out my SSN to anybody who isn’t a bank, current employer, or government agency, except in really special circumstances.

Doctors tend to be major offenders here - their forms always ask for SSN. I never fill it in and they often don’t even ask a follow-up. But when they do, I’ve almost always been able to still get out of it by telling them that I don’t give it out to anyone ever. Or I don’t remember it.

[tacon]

Unless I am legally required to give my correct SSN, I just fill it in with one digit off. If they catch it, then they obviously were able to learn my SSN by another method. Otherwise, I'm doing my part to salt my public records with disinformation.

[crazygringo]

So what do you do when your background check comes back empty and you can't rent an apartment because the landlord won't offer you a lease without it?

[tacon]

That "background check" service would be a joke, and out of business almost immediately. Let's say it was a lease application. I certainly am giving my real name, previous addresses, real phone number, real email address, real age, etc. So I enter my SSN with an off by one digit (human typing error, oh my) and this "service" doesn't know my real SSN, a list of every other SSN I ever entered, and 300 other data points about me, in a few milliseconds? That is a rather naive view of the personal data industry, at least in the US. Just the targetable list of items Facebook knows about you (whether you have an account or not, shadow accounts and all that) is rather impressive. The shadow data aggregation industry knows tons more, because all the websites and Visa and everybody is sharing behind the scenes. I'm trying to imagine any adult in the US today coming back with an "empty" background check. Maybe the Unabomber, living in a cabin. Normal people, not so much.

[dbetteridge]

Apply for an apartment that isn't running a background check on its applicants.

Is that actually a thing in America?

[crazygringo]

Of course. Landlords select tenants who are more likely to pay their bills and not run a meth lab -- with a better credit score, less debt, no criminal record, that sort of thing.

When it can take many months to evict a tenant who stops paying their bills, all of which is lost income plus then the cost of finding a new tenant, minimizing the probability of that is a landlord's top priority. Frankly, they'd be insane not to.

It's pretty standard to require a year or two of the first couple pages of your tax returns, and 2-3 months of bank statements, to prove your income as well, since standard background/credit checks don't have that.

Why, where do you live? Do landlords not require all this there?

[dbetteridge]

Both Australia and the UK ,the most I've needed is a proof of having a job (first page of a work contract).

Yes it takes a while to evict people and agents have a shared blacklist of tenants who didn't pay their bills but it is expected that the house owner has insurance to cover damages and loss of income, just a part of being a landlord.

Australia has a specific magistrates court for dealing with those issues and unscrupulous landlords or tenants for example

[crazygringo]

Very interesting, thanks!

I'm actually quite curious then -- if a landlord has, say, 5 different prospective tenants then how do choose?

Because in NYC the landlord will take offers from those 5 tenants, run checks, and then pick the one who seems least likely to default.

In Australia and the UK is it the same, but they just go with more of their gut feeling or something, rather than hard data? Or is it primarily income listed on the work contract but they can't find out about debts?

[gentleman11]

In Canada, I’ve never once had to give over a ssn or do a credit check. The American landlords are being abusive and invasive

[unanswered]

It has to be done because of anti-discrimination laws.

Refuse to rent to someone who you met in person and is an obvious meth head who will totally trash the apartment they second they acquire it; who obviously has no job and will never pay rent? Well you "must" have learned of some protected characteristic too and therefore you just discriminated against them.

Refuse to rent to someone because "computer says no"? You're fine.

[crazygringo]

That's fair enough with small doctor's offices.

I'm just saying, if you're dealing with recruiting at a large corporation and they need an SSN to start the process, that seems like one of those special circumstances it makes sense to make an exception for.