Originally Posted by xxxuniversity

So you are that cognitively deficient that you are incapable of understanding the purposelessness of such requirements? Because I can understand CCBill because the government forces them to do so. But even so, I would expect that even somebody working at CCBill - and you- should be able to concede that's why it's being done. You don't understand how the requirements are actually facilitating and enabling identity theft? And identify theft is more often than not associated with some type of fraud.

The point being is even if this has to be done, there's no reason anybody shouldn't be able to understand the problems and objections. And if CCBill did take the approach advocate, that would only indicate to me that they don't take the negatives seriously enough to be trusted with anybody's information.

The thing that gets me here is the excuse given to justify this usually runs something like this: criminals and criminal organizations do bad things. Again, let me ask this question: is being an affiliate webmaster and collecting affiliate revenue through CCBill a criminal or illicit act? Either that's a criminal act or not, and no amount of ID makes it any less criminal and failing to show ID doesn't make it more criminal. What people seem to really miss is that not only are there individual, lower level criminals, but there is such a thing as organized crime. To be clear, I'm not saying CCBill is guilty of carrying out the fraud itself. But these practices certainly make CCBill - and not just CCBill, but every organization doing this - an enabler of identity thieves. That said, one can't discount the possibility that even a bigger company could be a front for organized crime. It doesn't have to be at the webmaster level. It could go above that. As they say, the organized crimes use "dirty" money to start a "legitimate" business. It doesn't have to be a porn website! It could be a payment processing company, too!

Again, to be clear, I don't make any specific accusations against CCBill. My position is that the practice of collecting this information for this reason/purpose, while legal, is itself criminal and and enabling criminals.

If it was for a merchant account I had with CCBill, I could better understand the requirements. But for an affiliate account, it makes no sense.