I worry about how private our lives are in this electronic age. A few years ago I called the mutual fund company that handles my 401(k) retirement investments and reallocated those investments in a few minutes. The process was so easy it was scary. It was particularly scary to think that other people knew the information I gave over the phone and could, for whatever purpose, change my investments.
Earlier this year the Social Security Administration (SSA) began providing online access to individuals' Personal Earnings and Benefit Estimate Statements, summarizing how much a person had earned every year going back as far as 1951. An uproar followed, and the SSA suspended access in April. It will bring this service back to the Internet--with some enhanced security features--by the end of the year.