As an example, Baich cites a promotion currently going on in San Francisco by radio station KFRC 99.7 where users are asked to fax the station something with the numbers 997 in it -- including possible social security or driver's license numbers -- in order to win a prize.

Baich shakes his head. "As an employer, what can you really do to prevent your employees from doing something like that?" he asks.

"As a society, we have to mature from an ethical standpoint in the way we protect information," he said.

But companies and public sector organizations are equally in need of schooling.

As a counterpoint to the KFRC story, Baich recalls a recent hotel stay in New York City where he was asked to provide a driver's license so the hotel could make a photocopy for its records and noted about thousands of Visa applications from the Indian Consulate in San Francisco, which were sent whole to a recycling center and sat, in the open, for months before Consulate officials were notified of the problems. The documents contained detailed personal information that would be useful to identity thieves and included applications submitted by Byron Pollitt, CFO of San Francisco's The Gap, and Anne Gust, wife of California Attorney General Jerry Brown.