This is the 90's and early 2000's. We didn't have the security processes and checks like we do nowadays. I worked for a bank right after the dot-com crash and was in charge of their internet banking web presence. I was witness to other employees passing around CDs and printouts containing the private information of hundreds, maybe thousands of customers. This was the era when your SSN was your userid. So these CDs contained SSNs, names, addresses, bank account numbers, passwords (not even encrypted, much less salted), etc. I moved into a new cubicle one time and saw these CDs just left over. It was a free-for-all for people like Kevin Mitnick.
Getting credit card numbers out of the trash at a local Enterprise Rent-A-Car location was a weekly thing for us here, especially corporate accounts.
I don't think some folks nowadays realize just how effortless it was to find such information laying out in the open.
LOL, I was asked by a pet shelter for my SSN in order to adopt a cat. I stupidly put it down on the paper form and then asked why they needed it. She didn't have an answer and rejected my application to adopt. But she kept the paper form in case I tried to reapply in the future. I ripped it out of her hands and left. I should have just put a phony one in there...
They asked if I was going to let the cat outside. At the time we had another cat we adopted from a vet and we let it outside so it made sense that we'd let this one out too. That was a hard no (although they didn't tell you that). It was basically a trick question and if you didn't answer to their liking, they rejected you. That was 20 years ago. Nowadays the cat I do have is kept indoors at all times.
In the mid-/late-80's, you could easily get full PII (SSN, Name, DOB, address, mother's maiden name, etc) green-bar paper reports someone tossed in the trash when finished.
