Buying a phone without giving up your identity may soon become impossible in the US

The days of buying a quick prepaid phone at a gas station or activating a mobile line anonymously in the US may soon be over. According to a report by Fortune, the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is currently weighing a new proposal that would require all telecommunications carriers and Voice over IP (VoIP) providers to verify a customer’s identity before activating or renewing their service.The report says that under draft proposal FCC 26-27, adopted on April 30, companies would be mandated to collect every customer's full name, physical address, government-issued ID number and an alternate phone number. While the FCC has framed this “know your customer” standard as a tool to combat spam robocalls, the agency’s filing admits the database may also be used to investigate broader national security concerns, espionage, fraud and text network abuse.What privacy and civil liberties groups sayHowever, privacy advocates warn this policy would effectively create a government-mandated registry of every phone user in the country that puts vulnerable populations at severe risk. The report says that civil liberties groups argue that the proposed rules would shut millions of law-abiding, low-income and marginalised Americans completely out of the phone system.Citing a joint filing by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and the ACLU, the report says that an estimated 15 million adult US citizens lack a driver’s license, and 2.6 million have no government-issued photo ID at all. Additionally, the FCC's strict requirement for a “physical address” excludes P.O. boxes and mail-forwarding services. These are resources that unhoused people and domestic violence survivors heavily rely on to protect their locations.“The FCC’s know-your-customer proposal is misguided and counterproductive. The FCC’s own Safe Connections Act recognizes that survivors of domestic violence need a phone without a paper trail. This proposal shreds that principle,” Sydney Saubestre, a senior policy analyst on the Privacy and Data Project at the Center for Democracy and Technology, was quoted as saying.User data hacking concerns The report cites critics who questioned the security of forcing the telecom industry to store the government IDs and home addresses of nearly every American, pointing to the sector's poor track record of protecting user data.In recent years, major telecom giants have suffered massive hacking. In 2024, AT&T disclosed a breach where hackers downloaded the call and text records of 109 million customer accounts. In 2023, Comcast’s Xfinity division revealed a hack exposing the private data of nearly 36 million account holders. Centralising government ID numbers inside these same companies, critics argue, simply creates an incredibly high-value target for cybercriminals.Furthermore, privacy groups argue that the mass data collection will do very little to actually stop spam calls. They point out that the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has already found that most illegal robocalls originate overseas, rendering domestic ID checks useless.Get the latest technology news and updates. Download the TOI App.