To the editor:

Just hung up on a call from a Chrysler representative wanting to issue a credit card and needing my Social Security number (SSN) to send information! Monday, my parents received a call from an insurance company wanting SSN. Paying their house insurance for over 30 years is no longer enough! Telephone company, cable company, every company wants your SSN or they will no longer provide service. Yet we are repeatedly told via TV and newspaper that we should not give out SSN.

When Discover first wanted my SSN, I responded,”How wonderful that Discover is going to pay SS taxes on my purchases!” That sent the phone representative sputtering “No! No! We need it as a security check!” I asked “Isn’t that what the account number should be for; especially as I have never given you my Social Security number.”

The response was that anyone who has a computer can get your SSN. To which I answered, “Then it makes no sense to use it as a security check, does it.” Then hung up. I no longer use a Discover card as over 15 years of paying wasn’t sufficient.

Our elected officials and/or governmental bureaucrats put SSN on drivers licenses while advising not to give out the number! Brilliant!

Well, maybe we can trust those corporations to keep SSN confidential. After all, we have no idea who is the CEO until he is hauled off to the jail.

Yes, Dorothy, we are no longer in the state of Kansas in the good old U.S.A. We have joined Gulliver in his travels and ended up with Alice in Wonderland or Rod in The Twilight Zone.

Sarah Karl,

McLouth