We learned over the last week that hackers and thieves have made off with thousands of individuals’ most sensitive personal information from government and government-related sources.

Last month hackers broke into a computer at the University of Missouri in Columbia which contained sensitive personal information for 1,220 researchers and passwords for over 2,500 students. Anyone who used the Research Board Grant Application System to apply for federal grant money is at risk. The break-in didn’t come to light until last week, however. Of course, it happened because somebody failed to keep the computer up to date. The software was several years old, according to UM officials.

A laptop containing the personal information on 549 people was stolen Jan. 21 from the Glens Falls home of a New York Department of Labor unemployment auditor. The information apparently belonged to people whose businesses were being audited for compliance with unemployment laws. While the state notified all of the people involved, it didn’t consider notifying the press, because the number of victims wasn’t large enough to bother, and the government really doesn’t want to advertise how incompetent it is.

The real money in identity theft, though, is going to be made by enterprising thieves who target the people with lots of money and spotless credit. The sort of people who, say, use tax preparation services to try to reduce the oppressive burden we are all forced to carry. Thieves broke into CTS tax service in Cassopolis, Mich., in the middle of the night, skipped right past the cash, checks and other valuables, and made off with the computer. It contained personal information, including bank account numbers, for over 800 people. The owner is offering a $5,000 reward for information to catch the thieves.

And if you thought the troubles with the Veterans Administration losing veterans’ personal data were over, think again. The VA is missing a portable hard drive which may have contained as many as 48,000 veterans’ records, and believes it may have been stolen. The drive, which was used for making backups, went missing Jan. 22 from a VA facility in Birmingham, Ala. Last May, a VA laptop containing some 26 million veterans’ records was stolen from an employee’s home. The laptop was recovered a month later.

Fortunately, there’s some good news. The state of New York has decided to remove from the Internet commercial loan documents which contained sensitive personal information including Social Security numbers of borrowers all the way from ordinary citizens up to Donald Trump, after NBC News featured the site during a special on identity theft.

If you’ve already given up your personal information to the government, there’s virtually no way to get it back. The best you can do is, as much as possible, never to give it to them in the first place.