You can get a card from www.netspend.com. There are other cards out there that allow you to add funds from Western Unions or MoneyGram locations for a fee, but they ask for SSN, though sometimes they don’t verify it.

I advise you to try local bank branches to open up checking accounts without SSN. The thing that bugs me is there is no law requiring a Bank to obtain a SSN for non-interest bearing checking accounts, there is no interest being acrued thus they don’t have to report to the IRS. My bank wont even open an account for me using 2 forms of ID,www.netspend.com one of which is the credit card issued by their bank! Another thing that’s hard to deal with is Credit Bureaus, once they have your SSN, it’s pretty much there for life, however I did manage to social engineer TransUnioninto removing my SSN claiming the one on file was inaccurate, and as a privacy advocate I do not give out my SSN, but under the Fair Credit and Reporting Act, they are required by law to remove inaccurate information. They agreed to remove it ‘temporarily’ as my SSN would be reported to them by my creditors they claimed, little did they know my creditors don’t know what my SSN and so I now have credit and a credit report with no SSN attatched to it! www.netspend.com

As I mentioned California CPUC does not regulate cellular companies so it is difficult to obtain a cellphone without an SSN because almost every carrier requires this information to ‘run a credit check’ — or so they claim. I did however convince an AT&T wireless salesperson to run my credit using the SSN 000-00-0000 and I got approved, and the inquiry showed up on my Transunion report. So it is possible to get a cellphone through AT&T wireless without a SSN, though it may be hard to convince the salesperson that they don’t need your SSN to run credit.

The best approach when applying for credit or services is to claim you do not have a SSN, if you want move to Maryland and get a driver license there, they don’t even require SSN for driver license or identification cards! Carry around your Maryland license and claim you have never applied for a Social Security card because there is no law requiring you to do so. I carry around a copy of my TransUnion credit report showing there is no SSN and a letter from my bank stating there is no Social Security number on my credit card account and it usually helps assist me when I apply for services or credit at places that claim to require a social security number. It’s fun to see people’s reactions when I tell them I’m a privacy advocate and do not give out my social security number but I can provide 2 forms of ID, one being a credit card, and then to see the look on their face when they ask how I got a credit card without a social security number as I hand them my letter stating there is no SSN on my credit card along with my transunion credit report for further proof. www.netspend.com