Ah, one of life's great mysteries
Lets see, the last I heard from Datatron the Sheriff had seized all furniture, computers and equipment to auction to satisfy unpaid rent. That means that someone out there bought for probably a few dollars all shopper and client information. Hopefully it was password protected, but who knows?
Then there was the scheduler who suggested she work with company X and wanted access to their computers to see if they were compatible or some such bull. Company X was a little disturbed to discover she was transferring their database to her machine. Did they have our social security numbers encrypted?
The Federal Government is currently providing my significant other a year or eighteen months of identity theft protection because Homeland Security got hacked.
If you resign or stop shopping for a company and several years later try to register, their system will tell you that that social security number has already been used.
I went to the dentist for an estimate and they would not even give me that without filling out their paperwork including my social security number. I gave them my information because a 'rough estimate' over the phone sounded reasonable. When their real estimate came back at more than 4X that amount for exactly what I had asked about over the phone, I choose not to be a client with them. A month or so later my local news had their reporter and camera man out by the dentist's dumpster showing patient records thrown in the dumpster without shredding.
Always assume that your social security is floating around out there. Heck, back when I went to college our grades were posted 'anonymously' on the wall outside the department office by social security number.