You’ve probably all heard the warnings, as well as the sales pitches, to shred your papers before tossing them out—tons of companies are eager to assist you in this chore. Cross-cut if need be.
Is anyone telling you that shredding may not be enough?
Of course not—banks and retailers galore are receiving applications that have been shredded and taped back together, and GRANTING CREDIT on them!
This is absolute candy for the ID thief.
I’d like to propose one additional step in document destruction just to ensure nothing can be taped back together once it gets fished out of the trash: throw it away in different garbage cans that have differing dump times.
Here’s how it works: a credit application comes in the mail, or maybe some of those pesky balance transfer checks—something with all your confidential information on them. To destroy them, tear up or shred, separating the piles into however many different trash cans you have around your home (kitchen, bathroom, bedroom, office, etc.). Then distribute your pile of document shreds among your various trash cans, because they don’t all get dumped at the same time in the same can. This way, even if an ID thief were to get a hold of your shreds, he wouldn’t be able to reassemble the shredded document because parts of it would be missing.
Those missing parts would then appear in your main trash some time later, after the thief has grown tired of fishing and moved on. He still wouldn’t be able to reassemble anything unless he kept the original pieces—this could mean a long wait.
WWWD: Wenchypoo does not own any other shredder than the ones at the ends of her arms, so she tears up sensitive mail and divides it into three piles—one for the kitchen trash, one for the bathroom trash, and one for the office trash. This way, should anyone be homing in on her discards, they’d have to wait a good long time for the missing pieces. She also has the added bonus of an apartment complex dumpster that gets dumped daily, further ensuring a good mix of outgoing trash.
DO NOT flush any mail bits, as they might jam up your pipes, depending on your plumbing (mine is from the Colonial Era, I swear!).
I do this with anything that has any amount of ID thief fodder—Social Security numbers, account numbers, birthdates, full names, etc. I tear it up into small pieces, then distribute the pieces into pile 1 (kitchen), pile 2 (bathroom), and pile 3 (office). This way, an ID thief can only get possession of one pile at a time, and would have to dig through an entire dumpster (or the dump proper) to get any third of my documents. Since the bathroom and office trash take longer to fill up, they get dumped days (or even weeks) behind the kitchen trash.
Shredding alone and throwing it away in one lump is not the total answer to ID theft protection, because of those clever folks at 3M—the scotch tape people. By separating your lump and varying the dump times, this adds another layer of protection that’s cheap and easy to do.
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3 comments:
Hey I thought I was the only one who shredded and divided my shredded paper. My boyfriend says I am crazy for doing that because it will be fine since we have a diamond cut cross shredder (which is supposed to be really good at protecting your identity).
I divide up the shreds and put them in different trash because we take out the kitchen trash more often than than the bedroom and bathroom trash but he thinks it is silly. Thanks for the reassurance that someone else thinks this is a great idea.
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If it can be reassembled and taped together, it can be used to get more (or new) credit--best to do what you can to STOP or SLOW DOWN the reassembly process!
CNN just recently reported that getting info off the internet has become harder and harder, so thieves are again resorting to your trash and mail. They also re-ran the news segment that showed a bank officer holding up a shredded-and-taped-together application that was sent in and GRANTED!
Thieves are even getting mortgages and refi loans from these shredded papers--and let's not forget those pesky balance transfer checks, the biggest risk of all to shred and toss in one big lump. Any idiot with time and tape can reassemble those things, fill them out, and stick you with his or her credit card debt in one easy step.
What we do may be silly, but it's safety at minimal cost and effort.
I used to divide up the shredded stuff, but now we burn it in the coal furnace! There isn't anything left to put together, just ashes!!! Plus it makes a great fire starter.
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