Today while my dad was attending a sports event, I received a call from his cell phone, according to caller ID. When I picked up, it was this guy who identified himself too quickly for me to catch quite who he was, saying "I know this sounds really weird, but" he wanted to know whose phone he was calling from, because it had been left, and he could maybe look up my dad's ticket to the game and return the phone. He asked my home number, in case he had to call me again, our address in case he had to mail the phone, and if my dad was with anyone at the game (I said no). I wasn't sure about the whole thing, but I figured if this guy already had my dad's cell phone, that additional information couldn't hurt.

My dad didn't find the phone at the lost and found, and we've tried calling it repeatedly; it rings and no one picks up.

It turns out that my dad had the social security number of everyone in our family stored on his phone, which is one of those all-in-one gadget phones, and which has no password or access control whatsoever. What a brainy idea. The numbers were only identified by first name, though. So now some crook out there has all our social security numbers and full names and our address. Lovely.

Has this ever happened to you guys? And is there anything I should do to prepare for the imminent identity theft?