I printed off the paperwork for a merchandising assignment several days ago. It was for checking a line of products before Mother's Day. There were a few pages included that confused me but I decided to keep them with the others. Later, I realized that they were examples of how to fill out IC/employment paperwork. Why would I need an example of how to do a W-9? After I did the assignment, going through every page of the many products made by that company, I came to the example paperwork again. What didn't sit well with me the first time I saw it still didn't look right. It looked like someone's real paperwork. The address of the apartment in another state, the person's signature, and the government paperwork looked like they were produced by and for a real person. Then I looked at the other paper. It was a fax cover sheet. I called the individual in question, who lives in another state and asked if she wanted me to send it to her for proof or to just shred it. She told me to shred it. She didn't seem particularly concerned, almost as if she had already heard about it from another person, or maybe it just didn't sink in. I still can't figure out why and how something she faxed to the company in October wound up in a scanner in April and on a pdf with unrelated papers for me to use. Since this was a Mother's Day project and none of the papers had my name on them, it is possible that everybody around the country who had that assignment got her private information.