Yes, and shreds paper as well as credit cards and shiny plastic discs (why this matters below).
The idea of having someone go through my trash to find information about me creeps me out, especially if what they find are DVDs I’ve burned of porn I downloaded from the Internet and then decided I didn’t want to have around. Judge me by the porn I keep, not by the porn I throw away. Also, I want to make sure that my old credit cards can never fall into the wrong hands when I get rid of them. I used to cut them in two, throw one in this week’s trash and one in next week’s, but this is easier.
Maybe, maybe not. I personally feel you can’t be too careful.
We have one that my husband insisted on getting and promised to use. There’s about a bushel of mostly innocuous junk mail waiting for him to “get around to it.”
My (now ex-) father-in-law saw two guys drive up to his house, grab his trash, throw it in the back of their pickup, and drive off.
My sister had someone copy her checkbook info, pass a few bad checks with her name and account, and empty her account.
Identity theft is real enough.
Anyone who steals my identity isn’t going to get much money from me, my credit is crap, the accounts are near empty. The hassle having your information stolen, though, makes it worth it to get a little shredder. Anything with account numbers, bills, etc. all goes in it at my place. Plus, frankly, it’s fun.
I have two. A crosscut that I use for the free checks that the credit cards and banks send and for cutting up credit cards themselves when they expire, and one that I use for credit apps and other junk really just to keep the good shredder from wearing out too quickly. I’ve spent way too much time getting my credit score where it is to let some joker ruin my groove by digging in my trash.
I have been shredding most mail junk with name,address,acct #'s.
And where does my most likely risk of ID theft come from? 1) a cc that I paid off, but the acct was compromised (somehow), 2) a pension plan, where a consultant with a laptop was ripped off of his data. Password protected myarse.
Twice I get the letters saying sorry but your personal info has been compromised due to our stupidity.
It happens, But I still shred anyway.
I have a shredder. Two years ago, I had bogus checks with my account number on them drawing from my checking account, and my credit card was skimmed. Both drained a few hundred dollars before they were stopped. In neither case would a shredder have prevented my problems, but the incidents drove home the fact that thieves are out there, and they’re closer than you think. So I take no chances.
Every paper with sensitive information that I don’t keep gets shredded, and is used as stuffing in my bean bag chair.
Yep, we have one, and we love it. It’s fun making confetti out of all the crap we get sent. Besides, even if the risks of me being one of the people whose identity is stolen by someone going through my trash, why risk it at all? Especially when it’s so easy and convenient to prevent. Seems like a no-brainer to me.
I got a shredder about six months ago because I was working as a temp. and I had a lot of time sheets laying about with my social security number on them. Rather than toss them out whole, I took advantage of a sale on shredders and got a diamond-cut shredder. I now shred anything that has my social security number on it or has enough personal information on it (bank accounts, etc.) for me to not want anyone to get a hold of it if I throw it out.
I don’t use the shredder very often, but it’s come in handy since I got it. Initially I shredded about 50 pages of stuff, as I had faxed job applications and other things with personal info that I didn’t want messed with. I don’t know anyone who’s been the victim of identity theft, and I don’t want to be the first person my circle of friends knows with that issue.
Lord, I can’t type today. Having missed the edit window, that should read, "Besides, even if the risks of me being one of the people whose identity is stolen by someone going through my trash is small, why risk it at all?
I also wanted to add that my cousin had her identity stolen. The [del]woman[/del] thief was actually in a jewelry store trying to “buy” jewelry, and because my cousin had put instructions that she was to be phoned for approval on all purchases, the store owner called her. My cousin told the guy that that woman had stolen her identity and to PLEASE call the police immediately, and for whatever bizarre reason, the guy refused. They never did catch her. It caused her no end of grief for several years.
I am likely buying one today (not because of this thread… I’m just heading to Staples soon, and it’s on the list!) We are getting it mainly for “identity theft” reasons; we don’t like having our info available to anyone who cares to look, and in this city, there are people, mostly homeless, who will dig through your recycling bins and even tear open your garbage bags to find something that they might be able to use/sell/get a deposit on. I see these people three times a week… we have garbage pickup on Tues and Fri and recycling on Wed. I’d hate for one to see a bank statement and decide it might be worth it to do something with that information.
I also need an agenda, and some notepaper and… *wanders off in a school supply-buying daze
We have one at home. Hubby got it for Christmas at a gift exchange. It comes in handy, that’s for sure. When you have homeless types picking through your garbage on a regular basis, you become paranoid about account numbers, etc.
Heck, yeah! My dad has a sort of post-modern cowboy mentality in the “Them beans ain’t gonna count themselves, you know” vein. He gave me a “now you are a man” speech, even though I was a girl, when I followed his dictum that the first thing you should buy with your first paycheck is a shredder to destroy the stub.
Thanks to this thread, I’m now going to buy one. What’s the difference between “cross-cut” and “strip-cut”, other than price?
The magazine Private Eye recently carried a cartoon that nearly made me shoot orange juice out of my nose. It showed a bank manager sitting behind a desk saying to a customer something like: “Yes, Mr Arkwright, it’s a good idea to shred all personal documents to avoid identity theft. After all, you never know who’s been rooting through your bins!”.
Sitting across the desk from him, grinning widely, is a fox.
I got turned on to the personal paper shredder by a former roommate who shredded everything. She’d been an ID theft victim by someone who pulled docs from her trash. It took the better part of two years for her to get everything straightened out, and she still had credit problems. Now I shred everything too.
The way I see it, paper shredders are kinda like bike helmets: hopefully you’ll never need one, but the pain of using one is vastly outdone by the potential pain of not using one.
ID theft is very similar to house burglaries. A potential house burglar may case an entire neighborhood for a week just to find the one or two houses that are easy marks, and leave the rest alone. When I lived in an apartment I always found someone had dumped their paperwork trash intact - utility bills, credit card bills, etc. All it takes is one hit and it could be years before you can clear your name, let alone ruin your name and reputation.
We shred everything that has our names and any kind of account number on it, including addresses labels from things sent to us via UPS, FedEX, and the post office. I go so far as to mix the shredded mix with the daily, well used kitty litter.
When my bank lost one of their laptops during a routine shipment between data centers, a couple hundred thousand of us were notified. We all got a measly 12-month free subscription to a credit reporting company. However, it made me eligible under the law for a free security freeze on my credit history so I no longer get any of those credit card offers in the mail from anyone. It also means no one can apply for one of those quickie in-the-store credit applications in my name without me knowing about it. Even I can’t do it if I wanted to do so.
I’ve had a shredder for a while. I shred things for the same reasons that have been mentioned upthread: 1) don’t want anyone writing checks or applying for credit in my name, and 2) hate the idea of anyone seeing my personal information, knowing who sends me mail, etc., just because they were able to pull paper out of my recycling.
Based on the discussion above, it seems like identity theft is much more common in the U.S. than elsewhere. I also know several people who have been victims of identity theft. In one case, the thief was a former roommate of the victim. The others were all strangers.
I work for the State of Ohio, so my personal information was on a back-up tape that was stolen a couple months back. Ohio’s taxpayers have kindly purchased subscriptions to a credit protection service for all of us (and for a whole lot of other people whose personal information was on there as well). It’s similar to the service that Duckster mentions above. Here’s the one that covers us. Anytime someone applies for credit in my name, this service is notified and I have to confirm that it’s me. (The service calls me with a greeting that I recorded myself and then I have to follow prompts to confirm that it’s me. If I don’t respond, then the credit application isn’t approved till I’m available.) They also keep a fraud alert on my credit reports and have all those credit card offers stopped. I’m considering applying for a small loan from my credit union just to test this service. I’m also contemplating resubscribing when the original subscription expires because it should prevent/help me handle any issues down the road. The amount of effort involved in clearing up identity theft cases is amazing.