When April 15th was only five days away, I began to gather the myriad of forms and reports I needed to render my yearly offering to Caesar. As usual, I had lost a stack of 1099s from one of my investment accounts. This particular brokerage account is with a full-service financial services company–property/casualty and life insurance, mutual funds, retirement accounts. If there is a service or product that can benefit your financial future, these guys have it.

Knowing that this firm is considered paperless–actually it was an early adopter–I assumed I could log on to my account online and download the missing 1099s as PDFs. As I browsed the account in question, I noticed a new feature. I now needed a special PIN to access that account. I already had provided my usual log-on credentials over SSL. In the past, my user name and password were adequate to access the account and trade securities at will as long as I did not exceed my credit line.

The PIN was a snap–in fact, I did not need to give any additional information or answer any security questions before I was provided a temporary PIN. I then was instructed to create my "own" four-digit PIN. This all seemed a little puzzling, but off I went in pursuit of my 1099s. I followed a link to "Taxes" and then to "Download 1099 Information." The "Download" link flipped me over to a TurboTax Web site, where I was encouraged to download my 1099s into an online tax filing program. On the way to TurboTax, I passed through a disclaimer and other legal mumbo jumbo that seemed to absolve my financial services company from any responsibility should my privacy or my identity or anything else be compromised by passing my personal financial information to another party.