I'll be very honest with you. I am not sure that they ever DID. I go WAY back to 75 starting on CB and there were a lot of troublemakers THEN and there are NOW on the Ham frequencies and THEY never get popped. Like I said before you make up a Call sign say KD1 DDI something like that. They only time anyone would even question it is if they are looking to put you in their log book as a contact and they check the database for that call sign and it either doesn't come up OR it corresponds to a real call sign and they just go with the info they find. It'll be wrong of course but not catastrophic for anyone. Besides if you just buy that Baofeng and listen for awhile that will actually help you decide if you want to get into it deeper and if not and TSHTF then you wont be worrying about being unlicensed anyway and the FCC will have better things to do. But the suggestion of just grabbing the practice tests and going that route is a solid one because most of the questions you'll study will be on the test and you dont need to get a 100 percent score on any of them. You can also take those tests in pretty much any club that already exists in your area not to mention that Hams are good people and like seeing others keep the hobby going so they would be more than willing to help you.