Who is Mr. Baker?

This weekend, I stopped into my local CVS to pick up some NyQuil and cough drops for my wife, who had been diagnosed with strep throat (she also wanted to know if she could take NyQuil, Aleve, and penicillin all at the same time...goes along nicely with my posts on prescription drugs, but I digress).

When I got to the checkout counter, the clerk asked me if I had a CVS card. I don't, but my wife does, so he said he could look it up by phone number. I gave him my home phone number, he punched it in, and we were good to go. Then after I'd paid for my things, he gave me my receipt and said "have a nice day, Mr. Baker".

I laughed it off, considered whether the clerk had lost his mind, and got in my car to drive home. Then I thought about it some more and began to wonder. Who the hell is Mr. Baker, anyway? My wife and I purchased our home 3 years ago from its original owners, the Millers. I'm not certain if the Millers had our same home phone number, but we've had the number since at least June of 2007. So either there's a Mr. Baker out there somewhere making CVS purchases of Lord-knows-what using my phone number with malicious intent...or Mr. Baker sincerely needs to update his phone number.

Either way, the incident got me to thinking about privacy and fun with databases. My wife and many of my friends have recently become very concerned about protecting their personal information (with good reason), de-tagging photos of themselves on Facebook and taking care not to provide merchants with personal information unless completely necessary. But how many databases do we exist in that we don't even realize? And how many people could be using our information without us possibly knowing about it?

The Baker/Powers mismatch at my CVS could be an isolated incident, and probably doesn't matter much anyway. But as someone who recently changed his cell phone number, I do have to wonder how many databases the new Mr. 781-367-XXXX is now listed in under my name. What other information might he be able to learn about me, simply by having my old phone number? If I had asked the CVS clerk, what would he have been willing (and able) to tell me about Mr. Baker? I worry that in this new era of identity theft and privacy concerns, there might be more to protect than we could possibly manage. But if you do happen to come across Mr. Baker in your travels, please tell him to call CVS and change his number.