MASSACHUSETTS MEDIA WATCH: LOTS OF DATA, LITTLE PIECE OF MIND TownOnline.com - Opinion & Letters: Media Watch: Lots of data, little peace of mind

Last week in Minnesota, someone broke into a car and stole a laptop computer.

The problem is that the computer had the financial records of nearly a quarter of a million people on it. In San Diego, Calif., county officials are notifying about 450 people that their personal information might have been stolen during a break into the courthouse.

In Oregon recently, the records of more than 300,000 home-care patients were lost to a thief. Last summer, more than 40 million MasterCard and Visa accounts were "exposed to possible fraud" due to a security breach at a credit card processing company.

Welcome to the computer age, where knowledge is power, and where none of us really knows what personal information is stored in various places about us.

And we have even less of an idea who has access to it. The collecting, storage, use, dissemination and sometimes even theft of personal information is becoming a major problem these days. It's a situation that may be out of control.

This is an age where personal paper shredders are advertised in newspapers, where computer hacking can lead to a treasure trove of personal information and where the theft of a laptop computer can expose hundreds of thousands of people to possible fraud and identity theft.

One problem is that what ought to be our personal, private information is everywhere. For example, my Massachusetts driver's license proudly proclaims my Social Security number.

Yes, I know they're phasing that out and that I could have requested another number instead, but that's not the point.

The point is, the registry asked me for my Social Security number - which I voluntarily gave - and then used it. At Radio Shack, they used to ask for your phone number, even if you were buying only batteries. K-Mart recently was asking every customer for his or her zip code.

When students register for college entrance exams, they're asked for lots of private information, like religion, disabilities, the highest level of education completed by mother and father - and even family income.

To be fair, students are informed that they may omit or refuse to answer any of these questions on the computerized form.

But frankly, when the college board asks a question, most kids answer it. I know. Some of this information is used just for survey purposes. Other times it's used to make looking-up a customer's records more convenient.

But I worry. My bank recently added another whole layer of "security protection" to their online banking services. It involved me choosing a picture from hundreds available, naming it, and then answering three "personal" questions which presumably only I would know the answer to. Questions included the city where I was born, the name of my first pet, the mascot of my high school, my favorite childhood superhero, and where I met my spouse for the first time.

I know. It's added security and it's for my benefit, or so they say. But it did feel odd to provide those answers, and I felt strangely less secure rather than safer.

The sheer volume of personal information that we're asked to provide daily it seems is staggering.

And with that much information about each of us stored in data banks and on disks and in computer systems - and apparently on laptops that are left in cars - the need for protecting that information is even greater. I mean, I don't want to turn into a paranoid, refusing to provide any of this information to whomever asks.

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