I’m headed to Bucharest soon, and I needed to book a flight there from Istanbul. Luckily, there was this great nonstop option that just so happened to fit perfectly within my plans on a Skyteam carrier I have never even heard of – Tarom.
Oddly enough, as I am making my way through the payment page, I see a field marked with an * that I have never seen before when booking a flight – a blank space for my SSN.
As a seasoned traveler, I have never been asked by any airline for my SSN, and my gut wasn’t feeling it so, I quickly did some research. Interestingly enough, Tarom’s very own FAQ specifies that a SSN is required for online bookings:
However, U.S. Customs and Border Protection seems to disagree:
Of course my itinerary seemed to ticket perfectly fine with “00000000” in the field.
The moral of this story is to think twice before offering too much personal information.
I am very protective of my SSN online and in real life for obvious reasons revolving around identity theft; and it bothers me when even doctors offices try to fish for more information than they need by “requiring you to provide your SSN” to be seen (newsflash: they don’t need it).
Have you ever been asked to provide your SSN to an airline? Has anyone flown Tarom before?
Hi. Hey, I visited with you at an FTU (years ago– Seattle maybe?) I was supposed to go consignment/theift shopping with you guys, but was delayed. Curious, why Romania? I’ve been there three times. My kids were born there. Do you have your plans together?
*thrift
My wife worked for Social Security.she says Never give anyone your SS #
It’s a translation error. This is based on the Romanian CNP which is for some intents used for social security but in this case would be used as an ID card for travel. It’s not used to obtain credit so it’s not as sensitive as in the USA. A police officer in Romania would ask to see your ID card with your CNP on it were you to be stopped.
Many doctors offices require the SSN so that they can refer you to collections for non-payment, and as such, will refuse to see patients who has not provided an SSN.
You are only required to provide your insurance information.
I do not provide my ssn to any health care providers, and I have never been denied service. I suggest anyone who is denied service to happily find another doctor.
I’m from Romania living in UK. The company is state owned, just following procedures invented by some government official who doesn’t even know what a SSN is; they are just creating bureaucracy so they can shuffle paper around to make them self important and keep their jobs. A problem in any state owned company in Romania.
I have a subtle disagreement with the way you phrase one of the lines of your post. Perhaps you didn’t mean it quite the way it came across, but in case you were confused, I wanted to point it out. The line was: “However, U.S. Customs and Border Protection seems to disagree:” You then go on to point out there is no “government requirement” to provide a SSN to book an airline ticket. There is no disagreement there at all. Why? Because Tarom isn’t the US Government.
Tarom could require that you provide the SSN to book a ticket and deny you the ability to purchase the ticket if you failed to provide the number. Apparently, they don’t really require an actual number. The point is that they could and the statement by the U.S. Customs and Border Protection service merely indicates that there isn’t a government requirement to do so. It doesn’t mean that an airline, a cruise line, or someone else couldn’t require it before they sell you a ticket.
A disagreement would have been if there had been a statement by the Social Security Administration, the FAA, or CBP that an airline was forbidden from requiring a passenger to provide a SSN to purchase a ticket.
At least here in the US, you could also sue the pants off of someone who required you to provide data, failed to protect that data, and the dissemination of the data caused you harm. Tarom is stupid for asking for SSN’s and is exposing itself to liability.
What they want is your tax ID to provide an accurate receipt. It’s not their fault that the US is so obtuse that we mix taxes with Social Security and use the same number for everything.
Good job!