From experience at work for the last few years. I have seen many(and I do mean many) people who obviously go to great lengths to hide as much info about themselves as possible.  What I mean is in as much as multiple incorrect(read false) addresses, erroneous phone numbers and other misleading info.  I do work in high risk credit so I am used to the normal thieves. But, I mean to an extent of people living their lives in hiding for no reason.  You might call this the same thing that one of my managers calls it "Sub-Culture".  It seems everything about these people is false except for their license and social security cards.  The address and phone numbers they give are not theirs but usually of a family member(who gets pissed when you call) or a friend. They are not criminals and most are not dodging collections(I check these).  If you talk to family their family will lie like crazy for them(you can tell after you hear enough of it)and will tell you anything to throw you off of contacting them(I guess they think they are helping). I even saw one of the police shows a couple of nights ago where a cop had some girl pulled over for a simple non-traffic violation and she signs the ticket with a name other than her own after giving him her I.D.  Has anyone else experienced these things?  Why do you think a person would do these things?  I know I am not nuts but just wonder why people do this stuff.

Fear.

"Does the government fear us? Or do we fear the
government? When the people fear the government,
tyranny has found victory. The federal government is our servant, not our master."
Thomas Jefferson

Why do you presume that these people should be freely volunteering every piece of information asked for?  They know that if they refuse to give some basic piece of information, that makes them suspect.  However, if they lie about that information, who's going to know?  Contrary to what every data mining company would like everyone to believe, large corporations don't have an intrinsic right to collect and collate large amounts of information about everyone.  I would think a lot of people here could relate to the idea of working within the system while giving the system a firmly upturned finger.  I've gotten credit cards under the name "Guy Fawkes" (look it up if you don't get the reference) for those occaisions when I don't feel like even starting off on the right foot with a particular vendor.  The primary account is in my name and I've never done anything dishonest with any of my accounts.  What's the harm in concealing information?  I primarily use these cards for dealing with places of questionable moral fiber.  If I get the feeling that they might try to screw me, I want the consumer protection laws on my side, and if they pass the number on to someone else to use, I have a good idea who did it since I don't use the cards often.  Of course, I try to avoid dealing with these people as much as possible, so it's not a big deal.  If there was an investigation relating to something I did, it would come back to me fairly quickly.  However, that's no reason for my name to be on everyone's customer list.  I knew a guy who could do rot13(shift the letters by 13 letters in the alphabet) in his head very quickly, so he'd rot13 the name of the company asking for some information from him, add some vowels, and that was the name he gave them.  That way, when he got junk mail or phone calls, he knew who was selling their customer lists.  There's no harm in screwing with a system gone haywire, so if you don't want to play by their rules, make new ones.

The company truly needs the info.  It is not requested so it could be sold or passed on.