Sunday I got a decent-looking half cantaloupe and Pubilx WW so-called bagels on sale. Was in a rush and skipped breakfast yesterday. The cantaloupe was nice but not zomg this morning. The bagels aren't bad for what they are, but they don't fit my ideal breakfast concept either. Not sure what I did different but somehow boiled my instant coffee in the nuker.
When I got my free credit report (singular) the agencies (plural) each made me answer 3 questions to "verify" my "identity". Apparently I failed the test with 2 of them. This would be non-interesting except today while wearing my purchasing-agent hat, TigerDirect's website made me jump through the same sort of hoops just to use the company credit card. Cardholder's year of birth? Coworkers were able to answer that. Then the 3-question set: Which of these people do you know? No idea, guessed by sheer gut, probably should have said "none of the above". What city is this street in? Googled and made a very educated guess. And where was your SS card issued? That one at least I was fairly sure of.
So the upshot is, of course I was actually authorized by the cardholder to make the purchase; but even if I wasn't, if I knew them and did my homework, I could probably have put an order through with just public-record info. Which is kind of scary when you think about how many people must have access to these vast repositories of deeply personally-identifying data.