[widebody911]

I stopped at the local gym to inquire as to how much it would cost. They gave me a "waiver" to sign which asked for my name, address, phone number, wife's name, children's name, employer etc - data mining 101. And it was one of those duplicate/carbon copy forms - I should have kept it.

Then they asked for my ID, and I asked why. "We need to make a photocopy of it."
Why? "So we can attach it to the waiver."
Why? What do you do with it then? "We send it to corporate"
And what do they do with it? "I don't know."
I followed up with "So I can't simply inquire about the cost of a membership without giving you a hard copy of all my personal information?" They replied "Yes. We can't allow you in here without that."
But I'm already in here. "Yeah, but we can't let you past this point."
Ok, can you send the guy out here to talk to me? "No, we can't."
I said "OK, thanks for you time." and headed for the door.
Apparently there was a sudden policy change, as the "membership guy" was suddenly available for questions, outside of the safety of the Forbidden Zone.

Am I being paranoid?

Another example: I returned some stuff at Home Depot - no big deal, I've done it before, right? They asked for ID - again, BTDT. But this time she scanned the QC code (or whatever it is) on the back. So now they've captured everything that's encoded on it, and who knows what they're going to do with it.

Again, I think this is an example of excessive capture, and in light of the inability to keep said captured data safe, I don't think it's a good idea - at least not for us on the wrong end of the datastream.