I have small children and I don’t care how safe they are supposed to be, they would either permanently maim themselves or set the house on fire with something like that around. I do shred by hand in batches sometimes. They is no way someone can piece together something of desire out of a mixed bag of 20 envelopes ripped in multiple ways apiece and it only takes a few seconds and gets out some aggression.
Credit cards get cut by scissors and sometimes I like to play paranoid for fun and distribute the pieces among several different waste disposal mechanisms. I once tore and boiled a set of particularly sensitive papers and the resulting slurry inadvertadly taught me about do-it-yourself paper recycling.
I am all for automation but hand ripping up to ten sheets at a time resulting hundreds of different mixed pieces with more added seems good enough for me. I make sure to make a special rip across the names and social security numbers which are usually in line.
Yes, we have one. Have for years now. Anything with a name, address, credit card info, bank statements, and the little bags that our prescriptions come in. As stated above, the checks credit card companies send are a favorite.
We have one, because my husband runs his business from our home office. Lots of proprietary information going in and out, paper-wise.
Also, my oldest son was the victim of identity theft, when he was 2. Someone got his social security number, and obtained a credit card in his name. I discovered it when I received a letter addressed to my toddler, about his credit-watch protection or something like that. I had a hell of a time convincing some credit card company that my 2-year-old couldn’t sign anything, nor could he talk to them on the phone. Now I have to take extra steps every year to make sure it hasn’t happened again, and that’s a pain in the ass when the kid is under 13, but I won’t have his credit ruined because of some thief.
I’m quite cautious, now. I shred everything that contains identifying information.
Yes, but every time I put something in it, it smokes, so it’s in the back room ready to be thrown out.
Why?
My wife’s parent’s have one, and I love to use it. I’m a nerd who loves office things, school supplies, or things in that vein. I kept saying that I don’t know if I would need it, but it couldn’t hurt to have one. My wife bought me one for Christmas last year. I shred things pretty often, but mostly because I like watching it work. I’m the kind of guy who even “tested it’s capability” by adding one sheet of paper at a time. Turns out that it doesn’t actually shred as many pages as it says it can.
Am I the crazy one, for thinking this whole “identity theft” thing is overblown?
Well, no, but I think most issues like this are completely overblown. I do think it’s an issue, but serious, I work in a hotel, and there are people who won’t give out more information than just their last name because they are worried about identity theft. Unfortunately, they try to pay by credit card, and I actually had a woman tell me she couldn’t allow me to scan the card into the computer because that would allow me to steal the information. That would be fine if she paid cash for a room, but to bill it to her card kind of requires we swipe the card through the machine. She didn’t get it. :rolleyes: I do worry about identity theft though, just because it is an issue, but I don’t lose sleep over it.
I’m not too worried about identity theft (I’m not saying whether I should be, only that I simply am not worried), but I noticed a strip-cut shredder at London Drugs a few years ago (around C$35) and since I could just manage to balance it on top of the basket of my electric scooter, I bought it on a whim. I’ve used it ever since, since it is only minimally more to stuff things into the slot of the shredder than simply to toss them in the garbage.
As well, I live in a large apartment building, and the bag of shredding gets dropped down the garbage chute. If someone wants to grub through all the paper strips to put something useful back together, they would need to unbury them from under everything else that other residents drop down the chute after me.
I actually don’t get much Really Good Stuff in the mail that would really turn on an ID Thief (a little, but not much). I’ve turned off paper-billing for my Mastercard and Amex, and I’ve arranged with as many other billers as possible to charge my bills to Amex and not send me anything on paper. I can’t do that with a few places, but it does mean that weeks go by without me getting a bill for anything in the mail.