My dad lives in dire fear of identity theft. It's a genuine concern we should all have, but his paranoia is to the point that I wonder if something happened to him in his youth. For example, dad always makes a point of logging out of the computer. That's fine, but I thought I could point out to him that he could save time because every time he closes the lid to the laptop it requires you to input the password a second time anyway. But he flipped out, saying what if someone broke into the house, went onto his computer, and stole all his information. Honestly? If someone's broken into your house, him playing around with your computer is the least of your worries. And because it's dad, he already makes a point of logging out of any problematic sites like Citibank anyway.

Or here's another example, which I find to be the most incredible. He becomes visibly upset whenever I throw away shipping boxes that have my name and address on it. I can't tell you how much time he's devoted to ripping off our names off of every package that lands on our doorstep. Even though I've explained to him on several occasions that you can find all of that information on the internet anyway and even in his youth his name and address was in the white pages, he doesn't give a shit.

So you can imagine my surprise when dad was totally cool with giving out my social security number. I lost my keys back in San Fran, and the super said he couldn't make a copy of the key to the building without permission from the landlord. The landlord required my ID... and social security number. What? ID I can understand, but what the fuck does he want my SSN for? But dad didn't even question it! Think about that. He's literally spent hours of his life scraping off addresses from packages, but it never occurred to him that it was really weird for a landlord to ask for a SSN. In fact he became upset when I questioned it and had to lie down for a while. I'm so confused by this situation. What the hell is the point of a paranoia if it doesn't warn you in actual useful situations? It's like having an unreasonable fear of knives and can't even enter a kitchen because the knives are on the counter, but when a person approaches you on the street and draws one, you don't think it's a good time to run. That's literally what's going on right now.