Kate, Please, do not get the impression that this is a personal attack or I am picking on you expressly. It is just that the majority of people have had the "wool pulled over their eyes" by the marketing ploys of companies for so long that they no longer "see the light". For instance, where do you think you get the majority of your spam, junk mail, telemarketing calls, etc from? The information you gave to company X, Y, and Z in good faith for their product/service has been sold - usually without your consent - to third parties. I am sure when you offered this information for a desired purpose, it was not to be harassed by others who want your hard-earned money. Costco and the like are "Membership Warehouses" that do not accurately represent the majority of retail stores. Their primary goal is to get you to pay for membership and make sure that if you shop there, you have paid. I have been in these storse (in fact, I worked for Costco at one point in time) and passed through the "security" without them so much as being at the door, nevermind checking the bags, etc. If you enter, say, a 7-11, do you have to show your driver's license or Social Security card, or passport? Just a few examples to show that there is a definite difference. Likewise, the examples of "registrations" (ie, houses, utilities, etc) are inaccurate: * Despite what many people think, they do not actually "own" their property. The property is still owned by the respective state and is only "owned" by you or your relatives for as long as someone is there to claim it. If, by chance, there are no surviving relatives, the property is reverted back to state control for whatever purpose necessary. Also, there is the fact of "eminent domain", in which a state or other legal entity can claim your property for merely "fair market value" and oust you or whomever is unfortunate enough to live there at the time. Also, although I am unsure if it is still legal, there used to be "squatter's rights", in which if someone occupied a portion of land for X amount of time, it was legally considered theirs, regardless of who it legally belonged to. Delve deeply enough into the property laws and you will see that this is the case. (I forget the source, but I do know I have seen this in a legal context along the way.) * Utilities, et al, are products and services. You contract with the respective company to provide that product/service according to agreements. You usually only have to do this once - upon contracting the service - or whenever significant changes are made. Most of the registration processes you describe are one time only, unlike the CL and MS activation processes that require multiple registrations under certain circumstances. These registration schemes do not, in fact, protect the user. That is another fallacy that companies would like to make consumers believe. How did registering Poser prevent Poppi's computer/copy of Poser from being stolen? Sure, Poppi may have been able to re-register (most likely because she had the reciept, credit card statement, proof of ownership, etc), but the copy on the stolen computer/Poser is still "missing" and on the computer (if not reformatted or resold by now).