Icelander is right that in many places, to stay in a hotel or rent an apartment you are legally required to provide some form of photo ID. Yes, there are ways around that, and places which will just stick the info you give in a file cabinet somewhere, but you only have to slip once and I would be happy to roll against Streetwise to find a place like that without making the landlord nervous.
Quote:
Originally Posted by David Johnston2
Losing your cellphone and refraining from keeping up with your social media is more a matter of a willpower roll to resist addiction than a skill roll.
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What if your new social circle/employer wants you to communicate by phone? Its pretty common for people offering irregular work to have a list of people's phone numbers, and if one does not answer they call the next one. In many cities the "used stuff for sale" and "job postings" have moved to FB, someone without an account has a disadvantage finding work and setting up their cheap apartment. (And yes, you can create new accounts, but FB is
very very good at figuring out that two accounts belong to the same person, and you only have to slip once).
What if your new city has taken down the public transit maps/schedules and replaced them with a number you can call to see when the next bus will arrive because 'everyone has a cell phone' (and can use it in their gloves when the temperature is 40 below, sigh)?
You can still get by just fine without a cellphone or a smartphone, but it makes many aspects of life harder, slower, and more expensive, especially when you are setting up housing, work, and social life in a new place. There are REASONS why so many refugees have a smartphone.
In a world where plenty of middle-aged professionals with training in OPSEC do things like sharing nudes on their smartphone or using a shared Gmail account as a secret messaging service with their lovers ("we will each log in and edit a draft, see, that way everything stays on Google's servers ...") I don't think that stigmatizing these kinds of mistakes as "addiction" is very helpful.