We consider the support problem of Erdos in the context of l-adic representations of the absolute Galois group of a number field. Main applications of the results of the paper concern Galois cohomology of the Tate module of abelian varieties with real and complex multiplications, the algebraic K-theory groups of number fields and the integral homology of the general linear group of rings of integers. We answer the question of Corrales-Rodriganez and Schoof concerning the support problem for higher dimensional abelian varieties.