In my country, you can buy a pre-paid SIM in a store without providing any kind of ID, making it impossible to retrieve the phone number once you lose it.
I'd be very surprised to learn that such things are not possible in the US.
I'd be very surprised to learn that such things are not possible in the US.
That aside, I think at one point if people make dumb choices, they're screwed, can't do anything about it..
I don't think that a single "dumb" choice should result in people being screwed. Especially if the "dumb" choice is not really a dumb choice, except for "this one particular scenario in which it's dumb", like pre-paid SIMs. Quite a convenient way to blame the party damaged by big corp's bad decisions.