Yes, "data" may be plural, but the word "data" and the word "information" are often (if not always) interchangeable. Information is data. Just as it does not SOUND right for me to say the information ARE, it has never sounded right for me to say (or hear) "data are". I think of information as "stuff" and of data as "stuff." "The stuff is in the computer" does not sound bad. So thank you, I'll keep using IS with data. It might be Latin but I'm English-speaking. As far as I'm concerned it got transformed in the switch to English.