Newsgroups: can.general
Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!snow.white.toronto.edu!price
From: price@white.toronto.edu (Blaine Price)
Subject: Re: SIN Number
Message-ID: <88Dec14.202835est.15564@snow.white.toronto.edu>
Summary: Only give your SIN for income tax purposes
Keywords: SIN
Reply-To: price@white.toronto.edu (Blaine Price)
Organization: University of Toronto, CSRI
References: <302@idacom.UUCP> <723@apss.apss.ab.ca> <694@myrias.UUCP>
Distribution: can
Date: Wed, 14 Dec 88 20:28:33 EST

No doubt there will be a flurry of responses, but I'll add my $0.02 worth
anyway.  To my knowledge, you are not required to give your SIN to anyone
except in situations where that person is giving you money (including
interest on investments) that the government needs to know about for 
income tax purposes.  Furthermore, anyone to whom you give your SIN in
this situation is required by strict penalty of law not to divulge it
to anyone but official Renenue-Canada types.  The reason for the 
strictness (as far as they taught us in introductory CS courses) is that
giving someone your SIN gives them a key for personal information about
you in all kinds of government data bases.

-- 
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Blaine Price      (416) 978-5182                 price@white.utoronto.ca  
Department of Computer Science                   price@white.toronto.edu
Univ. of Toronto, Canada M5S 1A4     {allegra,linus,utzoo}!utcsri!price
"If it can't be expressed in figures it is not science, it is opinion."