WATE: Strawberry Plains woman finds insurance documents all over her front yard

"You have driver's license numbers, dates of birth, Social Security numbers, bank account numbers, addresses, and VIN numbers," says Komoroski.

She says her husband had seen a garbage bag full of the paper fall off the back of a pick-up truck earlier, and the person driving kept going.

This might actually be a worse threat than computer data theft. No access to secure databases or technical skills required, just read it off a piece of paper. At least it's limited in terms of the number of possible victims as opposed to millions that might be exposed by way of a database hack.

My guess is that somebody was on their way to a secure disposal facility of some kind. There are lots of companies offering secure document disposal services for businesses. Hopefully companies with this kind of info in their trash are using them. Some have mobile units that will come on site.

Individuals should also shred documents such and bank statements and credit card statements and any other documents with personal info. Small shredders are inexpensive and available at any office supply store. As an alternative, the Knoxville Recycling Coalition has free quarterly secure paper collections for home and small business.

The most valuable piece of paper I ever found walking down the street was an internal memo that would have been very interesting to a major company's largest customer. It was info the company would probably not want the customer to see. It might have been even more interesting to the company's competitors, like possibly $millions interesting. It laid around on my kitchen counter for a few days while I pondered whether to return it to the company with a suggestion they ought to be more careful. I decided it would probably just get somebody in trouble, so I threw it away. Hope it made it to the dump.