I changed my identity (email, etc.) to escape someone (my technician said someone probably at Mudcat) sending virus-carrying message daily for over a week. I will no longer sign up, but remain a guest. These "membership" lists are suspect because the site could be hacked into easily my particular strain of paranoia).
One side benefit was that the innumerable messages from a certain purveyor of books, cds, etc. also stopped. I once made a purchase from them, and regardless of requests, their spam kept coming.

My only objection to the ID cards is their quantity. Unless you are a homeless person, information about you and your finances is in the data banks anyway. One of the largest is in Atlanta; my bank in Canada uses data from them. If you report your income falsely on an application, they generally can find it out.

A service which I have used in genealogical work is to request the names, addresses and postal codes of everyone with a certain surname in the USA and/or Canada. Available on the internet from info sites. Only those with unlisted numbers are left off this file.