One of the blogs I enjoy reading at the LA Times is the “Daily Mirror” blog, which looks at news stories from the past, and includes various ads from the era. Today, one of the posts was about the death of ex-Mayor Frank Poole, but what interested me was the ad in the corner of the January 24, 1958 front page:
Now, think about the naivete of the times. You submit your social security numbers to the newspaper for a contest. Forty of them are published each day in the paper. If a newspaper did that today, imagine the uproar.
You realize that many young people today probably don’t remember when times were that simple, when we didn’t have to worry about identity theft. When faith was extended on a signature and a handshake, or an unverified letter of reference, as opposed to background checks and googling? My, how times have changed!
