You have to keep your wits about you when people ask you for personal information. If this completely anonymous Gnomie seems paranoid to you, consider the rise of identity theft as reported today:

There is something you don’t know about public access to your SSN. For years, the illegal beagles, law enforcement, medical industry, scumbags who profit selling credit ratings, and many others have been using SSN as a way to catalog people. ALL court records are public record. ANY LAWYER you hire will, during the first interview attempt to get your SSN into his database. S/he will attach it to ANY paper filed with a court. I mean: lawsuits, divorce, as well as any criminal proceeding. ANY. And those records are public information. Sadly, at this time ALL MEDICARE ID CARDS use your SSN as your ID number, thus broadcasting it to anyone to whom you present it for benefit processing. This must be changed.

I hope you never have the IRS come after you for taxes they claim you owe because some alien put put your SSN on his records. IRS always wants blood; anyone’s blood will satisfy them. And there is no way, at this time, to force them to clean up their records. They deal with you and then shred the evidence. Check it out.

You should, in every case refuse to put your SSN on anything except your tax form, your employer’s records (where all the office staff will have access to it), your bank account (where all bank employees have access to it), and tell the others to just use your name and address to identify you. At this time, your tax records are NOT open to public scrutiny. You will encounter hostility and ridicule because there is a blank or their form. So what? Show some spine.

Remember that Identity Theft story I related almost a year ago? Scary stuff, folks. Scary stuff.

[tags]security,privacy,identity theft,social security,personal data,identity,ssn[/tags]