Worried about online theft? Think paper shredding…

Identity theft is an ugly reality these days. It’s something that crosses most people’s minds on a daily basis in a variety of different ways. People question the security of the interactions they have on a daily basis. Is my online banking site secure? Should I access that banking site from the coffee shop using their unsecured network?  Is someone looking over my shoulder as I use my ATM card to withdraw some cash? When I bought that gift for my niece, was that site secure? People worry about safely moving through the world and the precautions we need to take to navigate that world safely change rapidly.

But here’s something to think about. All those cyber and computer transactions you worry about every day are NOT the basis for the majority of identity thefts. Online exchanges only about 9 percent of all identity thefts. What is the most common form of identity theft? Stealing paper documents and personal information.

So does it pay to be cautious and careful about where you plunk down your credit card information online? Yes. Should you type in your personal banking information using an unsecured network? Probably not the smartest thing for you to do. But the smartest thing you can do to protect yourself from identity theft is to take care of your paper documents. Call a Shredder and Shred them.

For a society that is trying to go paperless, there are still an awful lot of papers out there with our personal information on it. Receipts often have your name and credit card information on them. Bank statements have names and numbers that can be used to impersonate you. Your social security number can be found on a variety of different documents. Your children’s social security numbers can be found that way as well. These papers need to be safeguarded.

Many people tend to think that keeping papers in a file cabinet in their homes is keeping them safe.  That’s usually the case. But when thieves break into homes these days, they tend to take more than the big screen TV. They tend to take paper documents with personal information on them.

This is where a document shredder comes in. Every household should have a document shredder and everyone in that household should shred documents on a regular basis. Many people think it’s enough of a precaution to simply take the unwanted documents, such as junk mail solicitations for credit cards, and rip them in half or into quarters. A thief going the trash will have no trouble piecing that document back together and gathering your personal information. Paper shredding is a necessity these days.

Many people, in an effort to go paperless, are taking their documents and scanning them into their computers. When those documents are scanned, they should be shredded and then sent to the paper recycling.  This is the safest means of disposing of documents containing personal information.

Does it make sense to worry about online theft and to be cautious about how and where you give out your personal information? Of course. But be smart and safe about how your handle your personal documents as well. Chances are, not shredding those documents could cause you a great deal of trouble later if your identity is stolen.

Shredding of documents is now a normal business approach of many people who want to protect their privacy. It helps them to completely destroy the confidential or important information that they no longer need, in order to eliminate a single opportunity of any kind of identity theft. However, it is a normal course in any business that when it experiences further growth, the amount of the documents that are confidential, increase and they need to be disposed properly to prevent personal equipments as well as information.

Therefore, it is safe to make use of these services as they are easy and effective. They help you to get rid of the old documents, meanwhile securing the confidential information. These services are extremely affordable. They make an excellent option to help your business in destroying the documents that are of no use to you. With this you can also contribute to the environment. As they recycle the products, hence they are able to prevent deforestation.

You can even opt for paper shredding to work in a more efficient and safer manner as well as healthy environment. It is a sure way, if you want to protect your documents and important information that it normally contains because it destroys the information before it become accessible to any outside person. It’s true that today trash cans have become the source of criminal element. This is why people want to look for the ways that can prove safer for them and their businesses.

Further, this aims at the overall protection from any intrusion. It is proved to be consistently effective. Now, if you are adopting a complete document destroying policy then know that it is committed to give you complete safety. It works brilliantly in an office environment in real terms. In addition, often a question strikes our minds that what if we opt for gage locks on dumpsters? The reason behind is that they are not very secure. In fact, you personal information can become more accessible to the thieves because a lock on a dumpster alerts them about something really significant and valuable inside. Hence, it is important to look for the more protected and professional ways to be able to handle the problems related to data and documents effectively. This makes a guarantee to prevent identity thefts and to ensure running of secure work business environment. Decide on them to avoid devastating consequences.

Identity theft can be sub divided into four distinct categories.

-         Financial identity theft, where a person uses the identity of another person to obtain services and goods.

-         Criminal identity theft, where a person poses as another, when he is apprehended for a crime.

-         Identity cloning, where a person uses the information of another person to assume the role of that person in daily life.

-         Business/commercial identity theft, where a person uses another person’s identity to obtain credit.

All the above identity thefts are equally dangerous and also can happen to anyone at any time.

Most of these identity thefts generally take place due to the carelessness of the consumers, as they are not always careful with their important documents and numbers such as the social security number. It is very important on the part of the individual to be very careful with their important documents and numbers. When there is a real need to dispose off documents or sheets containing important information regarding bank accounts, loan details or social security number, it is always better to destroy the sheets of paper by shredding before disposing them off.

The same goes true for business houses, banks, insurance companies, mortgage houses etc. All these companies must be careful while disposing of documents, as those documents carries important, secret and confidential information about their clients. If this information falls in the wrong hands, the clients may fall in trouble. It is always advised that the companies must shred the documents before disposing them.

Today, shredding of documents has become a big industry. There are many big companies to whom the safe shredding of important documents are being outsourced by big banks, insurance companies, mortgage companies etc.. In Houston, there are many such well known shredding companies which are involved in the safe shredding of important documents. These companies are collectively called the Houston shredders. These companies have built up a reputation for themselves and are well known for their work ethics and professionalism. These companies generally collect documents which are to be shredded, from the various offices in big safe boxes, either on a weekly basis or a monthly basis. Then these boxes are picked up by shredding trucks and shredded in a secure environment. The companies also provide either a written certificate of shredding or a video footage of the whole process of shredding. Thus, it is better to shred than to be sorry.

Shredder

Shredding is basically the complete destruction of the used or not so relevant data, in any form, be it on paper or CD. Shredding is mostly used by offices and business establishments to destroy the various out dated and used up or old data. Common households also use shredding machines, known as Shredders to destroy unnecessary data in the form of papers or CDs in order to create free physical space for other uses.

The history of shredding machines or shredders goes back to as early as 1909. In the year 1909, a person called Abbot Augustus Low, a resident of Low in New York, invented the first paper shredder. His invention was also patented by the U.S.A Government under the name “waste paper receptacle”. But this invention was never mass produced.

In the year 1935, a German named Adolf Ehinger created a paper shredder based on the concept of the hand-crank pasta maker. Legend has it that Adolf wanted to get rid of his anti Nazi documents in order to save himself from the Nazi forces. So, he created the shredder to save himself. Later on, Adolf marketed the shredder extensively and the German Government became on of the first customer of the paper shredder.

History also has it that just before the partial and somewhat unsuccessful takeover of the U.S. Embassy of Iran, in 1979; the important documents were shredded using strip-cut paper shredders. When this information came to the forefront, the sales of that particular model of shredder rose by nearly 20%.

Till the early 1980s, Government offices were the only major buyer and user of shredders. But after the 1984 Supreme Court decision, in the case California v. Greenwood, the scenario started to change. In its judgment, the Supreme Court clearly mentioned that the Fourth Amendment does not prohibit the seizure of garbage kept outside the house for disposal. After this judgment, the sale of shredders increased many folds. Most of the business establishments as well as households started to shred their paper and CDs before disposing them, in order to protect their own interests and in order to be safe from identity theft.

Laws against burning and unrestricted landfills have also added to the importance and increase of sales of the shredders. Industrial espionage is again another modern day evil which is making the shredder more relevant and important than ever before.

The shredder manufacturing industries are solving a number of problems, just by manufacturing shredding machines. Firstly they are making sure that individuals, Governments and business houses are able to destroy their unnecessary, but at one time useful and important documents, safely and with minimum effort. Secondly the shredder manufacturing industries are providing employment to the unemployed youth of the country. Thirdly, the shredder manufacturing industry is also saving the environment by helping in the recycling of paper, thus preventing more trees from being felled.

It is in the human nature that man tends to be very careless with important things, such as documents once their use is over. It may happen that one or more document may end up in the hands of a person who is up to no good. Important documents regarding bank accounts, credit cards, loans, etc, may be kept here and there and may end up in the hands of a bad person. That person may extract very important data from those documents and use them for his own good and at the cost of the other person, to whom the documents belonged. So it is always better to keep important documents at a safe place. If some of the documents are no longer required, then it’s not proper to just throw them into the garbage, as anyone can retrieve it from there. It is better to use a shredder to shred the documents into pieces before throwing them away, as then the documents are no longer readable. Thus, shredders are always helping us to destroy our once important but now unnecessary documents safely, so that at the end of the day we are safe.

Shredders are also a boon for the environment. To make one ton of paper, ten trees have to be felled. Around the world, every year, millions of tons of paper are being used for various purposes. So this leads to thousands of trees being felled, which in turn effects our environment. Shredders save a lot of trees, as they help in the recycling and reuse of paper. The shredded papers are sent to factories, where the shredded paper is converted into paper pulp. This paper pulp is in turn used to manufacture fresh sheets of paper. Thus, shredders are helping us save our environment and also preventing others from misusing our documents and identities for their own ulterior motives.

Identity theft generally occurs when a person uses bits of information about a person, which is usually the person’s social security number, and uses that information to represent himself or herself as that particular person for cheating purposes. Examples of such cheating and fraudulent activities are very common. The fraudulent person may use these pieces of information to their advantage and obtain credit cards, loans, apartments, getting a cell phone, buying a house or car, etc and all this in someone else’s name. The number of victims facing experiencing such crimes is not a small number. A rough estimate puts the number of identity theft victims anything near the 700,000 mark.

It is very easy for criminals to get hold of the social security number of an individual. The social security number is used by most people as a proof of their identity and is used in universities, schools, libraries, insurance, banks, military, securities trading, etc. identity thieves scan through the garbage outside cafes, bars, restaurants, houses and business offices so that they can find the social security numbers of the individuals, as the social security number is being rampantly used in various places as proof of identity. As the paper in the garbage is generally not shred, just crushed up and thrown away, it is very easy to get the social security number. Once the miscreants get hold of the number, then there is no way stopping them from misusing that number for their own fraudulent motives.

There is another way of getting the social security number. Generally the thieves check the garbage outside offices, banks, mortgage companies and ATM counters, in search of loan slips or credit slips or ATM slips. Many of these documents also carry the social security number or the bank account number of the individual. Once the thieves get hold of either of the numbers, either they use it themselves or pass the information to some other thief or a group of thieves. All this happens because the slips are not shred. If the slips were shred, the thieves could do no harm, even if they go on sifting through the garbage all day.

So, it is very important that we all understand the importance of shredders and shredding. It is high time that all of us, be it an individual, a business house, banks, mortgage houses, cafes, restaurants or the law enforcing agencies, should understand the benefits of shredding and use it to safeguard our interests.

Businesses produce a huge quantity of printed documents and materials on a near daily basis. Disposing these has always been given the greatest importance due to the sensitive nature of the content. Document shredding is a cumbersome and time consuming process for businesses to adopt by themselves. Dedicated personnel are required to keep the documents secure prior to and during disposal. They would also need to keep a separate room for this task as it takes up a lot of space. 

Businesses have now started engaging document shredding services from professional shredding service providers instead to save themselves the time and space. But when trusting your sensitive documents with an unknown service leave room for countless openings by which the shredding services might error. Firstly there are too many personnel involved from the office’s workforce. Vast numbers of employees are involved in the actual sorting of the documents all the way up to the shredding. This creates the question – how safe are shredding service providers? 

Credentials of the service providers and testimonials must be scrutinized before engaging a service provider. There are two types of services. Off site and on site services are the two methods offered for document shredding. Off site service providers arrange for a container to remove your documents and take them to their warehouse for shredding. This method is less desirable as one cannot witness the destruction of the documents. 

Some services collect the sensitive office documents for their destruction inside the office campus. This method of service is termed as onsite shredding service. By this method any worries regarding the safeguarding of the private contents is guaranteed and is always open for your inspection. Firstly the documents are held in bins under lock and key, for collection. A representative from the company unlocks this bin and carries the documents securely to a truck waiting outside. Documents are then passed through a shredder that is fitted inside the truck. This happens behind locked doors. Some companies issue a certificate as proof that your valuable documents have indeed been destroyed.  

This type of onsite shredding is a secure process and is safer as it avoids the insecure transportation of your documents to a far off location where you have no control over the supervision of the shredding process. The use of shredding services does help reduce work load but the responsibility for securely performing the disposal still lies with the company. It is advisable to select a service that uses fewer steps. By reducing the number of hands that your documents are exchanged between it is possible to secure the shredding process. 

Another advantage to using an on-site shredder is employee time.  Using employee time efficiently is a must in today’s highly competitive society.  Using a salaried employee as a shredder is probably not the most effective way that employee could be using their time.  On the flip side you could stock pile your documents and have a low level employee be used as a shredder.  Using a low level employee as a shredder probably isn’t the best idea either.  Using this person as a shredder allows them access to the company’s most sensitive material.  All you have to do is pick up a paper to read about a corporation facing criminal and civil lawsuits because some manager assigned the shredder duties to a low level employee who found it easier to deposit the records in the back dumpster. 

Still another advantage of using an on-site shredder is security.  A good shredder will destroy your documents on-site and issue you a certificate of destruction.  Most metropolitan areas will have a few shredders to choose from.  Choosing the right shredder is crucial.  Choosing the wrong shredder could result in disaster.  Always check to make sure the shredder belongs to a governing body like the National Association of Information Destruction.  Also make sure the shredder is accountable within the community by being part of the Better Business Bureau.  Make sure the Shredder is involved in the Chamber of Commerce, and make sure you ask the shredder for a list of references.  If you follow these few guidelines, you will find a good shredder.