With that information, how exactly are they going to make me pay for those online orders?
My work place allowed us to bring in reasonable amounts of personal paperwork to be shredded. There’s also a local bank that runs shredding trucks a few times a year. I don’t bank with them, but it was open to the entire community. It’s nice to have a free service. I know the FedEx office offers shredding, but do they charge?
As far as birth dates, unless it’s a official application like a loan or government forms, I’ll put my birthday as January 1st. Sometimes I’m a few years younger too.
How much good is that these days when the instructions included are to go to creditcard,com and enter this pre-approval number?
This exactly.
That’s something I’ve wondered about. I used to always shred those “pre approved” credit card applications, but I don’t really get many of those anymore. Now they just instruct you to scan a QR code or go to their website and enter the “offer number” from the mailer. But I wonder if that number and QR code contains any information that would identify me, personally, or if it just tells them that you’re one of the 100,000 people they sent that offer to.
Good question, I never read them lol. I guess I need to now.
“I hate digging through this stinky trash bin to find the address of the house next to it…”
I take my mail to a charity paper recycling dumpster at a nearby school. I always rip out where my address appears before putting it in the “mail recycling pile,” although certain pieces sometimes reach the limit of "too much trouble to make it anonymous and it goes in the “take to the office and put in the secure disposal bin.” The paper shreds with my address on it actually go in my regular garbage so that all ends up spending a night on the curb inside a garbage bag in my bin. So I guess I don’t trust people raiding the charity dumpster (which can go weeks before being dumped) than my bin being targeted overnight on garbage day.
I’m sorting out my mom’s estate. She had tax records and canceled checks going back 40 years. I spent most of yesterday shredding stuff.
I’m going to keep 10 years of taxes, I think your supposed to keep 7, but that’s probably overkill. I used to do her taxes, but gonna go see a CPA for her final taxes.
I keep 10 years of tax records, but it may indeed be overkill. I’ve gotten into the habit of shredding my oldest records before I do my taxes for the current year, thus freeing up spaced for the new tax records I’m about to generate.
When my dad died, we closed his accounts (credit and bank) so I had no reservations about tossing statements from those accounts in the trash.
ETA: Especially cancelled checks. People who use checks (I’m one of them) routinely give checks with their address and account number to complete strangers.
We shred anything with any personal info, personally I wouldn’t shred something with just our name and address but my wife insists that we do. Anything with account numbers gets shredded, old credit cards get cut into multiple pieces and we make sure the strip and chip are both cut.
Paying by check seems to be a weak point in the armor- whenever you pay by check, by person or by mail, anyone who handles it can merely copy the routing and account numbers and he can use it to pay for things online.
Another shredder here. If I could I would just mount a shredder right on the pole in place of the box and save myself a step bit I don’t think the carrier would abide that.
I just wrote a ‘check’ today, kinda-sorta. Just paid my annual dues to a small club I belong to, via my CU’s bill pay system. A small enough payee that they will most likely mail a check instead of sending an ACH but at no cost of either check stock or stamp for me. The way they do it is to debit my acct & credit theirs. They then mail out a business style check, with my name but their (actually the vendor’s) ABA & acct # & that acct I’m sure is setup with positive pay so an evildoer can’t really get away with anything when they get ‘my’ check