BWAAA-HAAA!!!! And then we have those people that post on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and who knows what else, that they'll be making a week long trip to go on a vacation and then wonder why their house was ransacked while they were gone.

I know it's not a part of a lot of data professionals' jobs but I've always regarded a person's information as being private even before the Privacy Act of 1976. That notwithstanding, it's a real tough thing for me to understand why some companies say they need my SSN. They say it's for a credit check yet when I call them up for help, they always ask for the "last 4 digits" of my SSN. Sure, there's ways around that but holy moly. I think people have greatly over extended what "For security and tax purposes only - not for identification" (written on SSN cards) actually means. It's only come to mean that you can't use the card as a form of identification.

Folks talk about some of the great strides we've taken with PCI and the like but despite the great effort there, it does little to ensure actual "privacy". I'm not sure that such a thing actually exists anymore.