Your SSN is, believe it or not, publicly available, due to certain legal documents requiring it being freely available to view online. It's really not nearly as secret as people think.

Got any references for that? That sounds highly implausible, and nothing is showing up on Google or Wikipedia. I'd love to know where you read this.

Every time I read Jon's feature, I'm disappointed. Jon, your advice is security theater (if you don't know what that is, go take a look at Bruce Schneier's blog). Identity theft is very real, and some of the steps you have outlined might make you marginally less likely to be targeted, but what on earth is this doing in a World of Warcraft blog?

That said, the example you used of someone being stalked and being reported to the authorities as a child abuser are certainly possible, but anyone willing to risk jail by breaking the law that much is certainly not going to be deterred if you happen to follow all of your "tips".

At best, following your advice will make one slightly less likely to be picked up in a casual identity theft attempt.

Here's the thing- 90% of identity theft is committed offline (mail theft, for example), and of the online stuff, 99% is money based. Real life griefing will land someone in jail in real life, so it's as rare as any other type of harassment.

There was a scandal a while back where Florida made many of their records available online. It may not be possible to access everyone's records in every state, but even if you can't find them online it's just a jaunt down to the local records office to browse through some documents.

http://writ.corporate.findlaw.com/ramasastry/20060417.html

Social security numbers were never intended to be the oh-so-secret personal identification numbers they're used as today. While some measures have been or are being taken to redact archived documents, they're still not nearly as hard to find as most think.