Yes.
Yep. Kind of a pain, but cheap protection against ID theft or anyone seeing my financial information. When I toss my old bank statements, I don’t want everyone in the neighborhood to see my balance courtesy of a ripped bag or careless garbage man.
Rob Cockerham has a great site where he does lots of odd experiments. He found out how easy it is to get a credit card in someone else’s name.
ID theft probably is overhyped, but a shredder is cheap and doesn’t take much time. Just don’t leave it on “Auto” all the time if you have children or pets. Apparently there have been cases of children or pets getting their fingers or tongues caught in shredders that are tripped by a sensor (Snopes link). Best to leave it off unless you’re sitting there using it.
Yes. It’s a good one, too. I had a little trouble once when I accidentally tried to shred a penny, but other than that, it’s a great household appliance.
I give my sister-in-law the bags of shred. She supplements the bedding in her horse stalls with it. Go figure.
Err… No! I’ve never had my full identity stolen, as in someone running around with a passport in my name. But I have had credit card information lifted a couple of times, one being my company credit card by a very sophisticated outfit in Thailand who recorded the electronic information as well as the security code. A shredder wouldn’t have helped, but this does demonstrate how serious people are about getting your personal info and what lengths they will go to in order to get it.
I just got one a month ago. Ever since I paid off my credit cards, they keep sending me checks to run up the balance again. I’m uncomfortable just throwing away blank checks.
So an ounce of prevention really is worth a pound of manure.
I’ve got one. I work with confidential documents and have ethical and legal obligations to destroy them if they’re not locked up. I’d rather do this at home or at work, wherever the document or draft is created. In addition, we have curbside recycling so anything can be stolen from the can.
I don’t know why you don’t know victims of identity theft. I know several, and I know some people who have stolen other people’s identity. Some are in jail; none are related to the person whose identities they stole.
I do.
Ma does.
My siblings do.
It prevents many bad things.
- Identity theft
- The blank checks sent to you from being filled out and used by somebody.
- Anything with account numbers and balances are not available for emptying your accounts.
- Other.
We have one. We get pre-approved credit card offers in the mail, and I don’t feel comfortable just tossing them. We pay our bills online, and shred the bill afterward.
I’ve got one. Pre-approved credit card offers, those blank credit card checks, and anything else I think might be a security risk gets reduced to confetti. I live in an apartment, and my garbage goes into the same dumpster that 100 other people use.
My sister has had her identity stolen, incidentally.
We have one, but we didn’t get it for identity theft reasons. My wife works from home, and needs to be able to destroy both confidential medical records and sensitive company information. So that’s why we have one.
Of course, it’s also handy for destroying credit card receipts and bills and such, but that’s not why we got one.
I have one. Nice little cross cutter, only cost me $20 or so. I don’t use it as often as I should, but that’s due almost entirely to the “don’t shred more than x documents per day” warning on the box.
Me, too.
Snap, except that I don’t own a rodent. I do, however, shred and compost my bank statements and junk mail. Adding shredded paper to grass clippings in the heap really gets the ol’ compost pile steaming, and stops the clippings clumping together into a soggy mush. There’s something satisfying about junk mail being turned into crumbly garden compost, too.
Unfortunately, though, I need to buy a new shredder as I killed the last one. (Well, “Max 5 sheets” sounded like a challenge…)
Yes I have one. I’ve had to work very hard to rebuild my credit post-divorce, and using a shredder is a very easy way to protect my identity and my credit. As others have posted, those credit card companies send all sorts of stuff with my name and address plastered all over them. I shred them, and every couple of months, I put the bag with the shreddings in my recycle bin.
I guess I could consider using the shredded paper as cat litter–make it that much harder for someone to paste the shreds back together again!
Another shredder owner here. I bought mine after someone got hold of two of those effing blank credit-card checks that the card issuers are always sending out and decided to treat him/herself. It was no big deal getting the bad checks removed from my record, but now I shred all financial documents and anything with my address on it.
I picked up a pretty nice at Target for like 50 or 60 bucks because of fear of identity theft (I had a credit card counterfeited with my number once, but of course have no idea if it was from my trash or whatever), and yeah, it’s oddly fun shredding stuff.
We have one too. I’ve had credit card information stolen, and a former boss of mine was a victim of identity theft. It took him 2 years, a couple thousand dollars and whole lotta time to straighten that mess out. It was a giant PITA and something I would like to avoid experiencing.
Another shredder checking in.
Yes, security is the reason, but not only identity theft.
Years ago, in California, I had put all of the junk mail and old bills in a garbage sack and when I got home, somehow the sack had ripped and there were my bills and papers blown all over the damned street. It freaked me out to know that every neighbor could, and most likely did, see how much my power bill was, every phone number I called printed out on my phone bill, the late payment notice from the credit card company. Not that I was afraid my neighbors were using the info for anything illegal, I just didn’t like the idea that they were able to saunter down the street and read more about me than my own family knew.
Bought a shredder the next day and have had one ever since.
I have one at home, but only because it was a freebie. We buy a ton of office supplies from Staples , and they had some sort of promotion that involved free shredders.