I know there’s a certain segment of people out there worried about privacy. As you could probably guess, I’m not exactly one of them – I have this fucking blog! Even if that’s more ego driven than anything, I still put a certain amount of myself out there for everyone to see. Privacy is not high on my list of concerns.

That’s not exactly what I mean though. More specifically, financial privacy. Or rather the idea that you’ll have your identity stolen or someone will use your financial info to rip you off. Even with all the scare tactics the media uses, I’m still guessing the rate of occurance is pretty low.

My grandmother turns 83 this year. She’s outlived a couple of husbands and is currently shacking up (heh) with a longtime male friend. She introduces him as her companion. (how cool is my Grandma?) At any rate, this guy is a total technophobe. He’s convinced the second you do any sort of online banking that someone will drain your account. He’s so paranoid that he won’t even use his ATM card at a store checkout thinking someone will somehow get or use the info to clean him out.

I just use this guy as an example, but I know there’s a certain segment of people that have similar fears. I’m not one of them. I’ll give my bank and CC numbers to practically anyone.

The best part (and the single greatest, conversation stopping retort) is that most people have been handing that info over to complete strangers (and possibly quite shady ones) for ages…

…on personal checks.

Seriously, if you’re weirded out by the tech behind online banking, digital transfer of money and all of that – then shouldn’t you be more scared of handing over a piece of paper that potentially contains your name, address, phone number, drivers license number, bank name and bank routing & account numbers printed on it to some kid making minimum wage at Wal-Mart? Which in turn will be handled by (or easily accessible to) who knows how many random people in it’s journey from your checkbook back to your bank.

If someone wanted to pull some kind of money scam with your bank account, wouldn’t a personal check be the simplest and easiest way to acquire the most useful info for such a thing? That’s where I’d start.

So the next time the paranoid and/or technophobe in your life starts spouting off about how they fear being taken in some way, remind them that they give away tons of personal bank information on every check they right and then hand it to or send it off to complete strangers. It usually shuts them up. (and for the most paranoid, it’ll be entertainment watching them try to live the rest of their lives using just cash)