I have a lot of personal information such as credit card statements, bank statements, sales receipts, bills of sale, paper checks, personal information, computer printouts, etc. on paper. I had been throwing away all of this paperwork in the trash. I realized that anyone could read these items without any trouble at all. I knew I had to do something to protect my personal information.
If someone steals your identity, it can cost you thousands of dollars, a bad credit rating and years to put your life back together.
I spoke to a police officer that I knew about this matter. I asked him about putting all of my paper information in the trash can. I told him that I then placed the garbage can to the curb in front of my home for it to be picked up. The police officer told me that once anyone places anything into the trash and puts that trash out to the street for pick up, everything that is waiting for pickup can no longer be claimed as being your personal property.
In addition, you no longer have an expectation of privacy over anything that is placed to the curb for garbage pickup. The police can take everything you have put to the street for pick up without a warrant and go through it. Anything they find can be used against you or used to build a case against you. Also, private investigators, a neighbor or a stranger can take your garbage and recover anything from it that they want.
My police officer friend advised me to purchase a good paper shredder and shred ever piece of paper before placing it in the trash.
I went to my local national chain office supply store and inquired about paper shredders. I learned there were many different brand names and types of paper shredders in many different price ranges. I found two of the most important things to consider when purchasing a paper shredder are the size of the shredded pieces of paper and how many sheets of paper can be shredded at one time without jamming the shredder.
There are basically three types of paper shredders, strip-cut, confetti-cut, and micro-cut.
The strip cut paper shredders are better than doing nothing. They typically shred a regular piece of paper into approximately 45 long horizontal strips. These types of strip cut paper shredders are usually the cheapest of the paper shredders and not very well constructed. There are computer programs that can be used to reconstruct a document that has been shredded by a strip cut paper shredder. However, it only took me a few minutes to start to reconstruct some of these paper shards to be able to read part of the document.
Confetti cut paper shredders are much better. These shredders are also called cross-cut paper shredders. They slice papers horizontally and vertically. This type of paper shredder is MUCH better than the strip cut paper shredders. The confetti cut type of paper shredder cuts a normal size sheet of paper in approximately 350 pieces. This makes it a lot harder for anyone to put a document back together. They cost a little more than the strip cut paper shredders but are well worth it.
Micro-cut paper shredders are the best type of paper shredders to use. The micro-cut paper shredder is the type that many federal government agencies use. They are also usually the most expensive of all of the paper shredders. This type of paper shredder shreds a normal piece of paper into approximately 2,500 small pieces. To my knowledge, it is almost impossible to put a document back together if this type of paper shredder is used to shred a document. This is the type of paper shredder that I decided to purchase.
Shred ALL of your paper work, including trash mail before you throw it away. The increased volume makes more paper shreds and thus makes it more difficult for someone to put the shreds back together.
Do not place shredded paper in any type of a bag for disposal. Doing so makes it easier to put the shredded paper back together. Instead, place the loose shredded paper in the very bottom of the garbage can. This way when the garbage man or anyone attempting to recover the shredded paper turns the garbage can upside down to empty it, the paper shreds will dump out further mixing them up. This makes the shredded paper even harder to put back together.
You empty the paper shredders by one of two ways. One type of shredder holds the paper shreds in a pull out drawer/hopper that collects the shreds and retains them for disposal. Another type of paper shredder retains the shredded paper in a waste paper basket. You lift the paper shredder apparatus off the basket and empty the basket.
Wait until the paper shredder hopper, the basket or pull out bin, is almost full of shredded paper before emptying it into trash can. The more paper shreds in the trash can, the harder it is to place the shreds back together. It is unknown to me if there is a computer program that can be used to put back together confetti-cut or micro-cut paper shreds. Even if there is such a computer program, it would be a lot harder and more time consuming to accomplish.
No piece of paper leaves my house before it is shredded, except for the newspaper. Even advertisements and junk mail gets shredded. The more paper shreds that are placed into your garbage can at one time, the harder it is to attempt to put any particular page back together.
If you are really concerned about your confidential paperwork information being compromised, after shredding your documents, burn the shredded paper, if your local laws allow, then bury the ashes.
Also, some paper shredders have an additional feature that you can use to shred credit cards, DVDs and CDs. The micro cut paper shredder that I purchased has these features.
There is usually a safety feature built into the mechanics of most paper shredders. When you remove the hopper to empty the paper shreds, a deactivation switch automatically stops the shredder from working.
Some paper shredders have an automatic cut off switch built in that activates when the paper hopper becomes full.
Never attempt to clear jammed paper, in any paper shredder, unless you unplug the electric cord first. The blades of a paper shredder can shred you fingers just as easy as it can shred paper. Extreme caution should be used when having and/or using a paper shredder in a home with children and/or animals.
Good post, Coach, thanks.
One more minor, but important, heads-up. Should you decide to burn your shredded paperwork, remember that it will be a HOT fire. I’d avoid burning paperwork in an indoor fireplace unless the flue is extremely clean, and probably not even then. A former neighbor started chimney fires twice this way, over the years.
Be safe.
I used a paper shredder for quite a while until mine quit working. It was a heavy duty thing that cost several hundred dollars. I confess that privacy was not my main issue, but rather wasting all that paper that was coming into my house. For a while, when I had more time, I was recycling all the paper that came into the house: Newspapers for fire starters and under garden mulch, and almost all other papers, including toothpaste and cereal boxes and toilet paper cardboard rollers went into the shredder (come to think of it, maybe that’s why it quit working). Used Kleenex, too, though not through the shredder. All of this went into the compost. Needless to say, our compost pile(s) are large, and I service them with my skid steer loader.
Since my shredder broke and I haven’t replaced it, for now I just bury the stuff in the compost pile anyway. Or somewhere where I know it won’t be disturbed for a while. We live on 3 acres and I have quite a few places where I can bury stuff in ‘sheet composting’ and not have to worry about it.
We recently moved, to a new garden, quite a volume of compost where I had buried bags and bags of shredded paper that my wife brought home from work (City Hall). I expected to find a lot of shredded paper still intact in there, but to my surprise found one football sized chunk in about 8 skid steer buckets (maybe 30 or more large wheelbarrows) of compost.
If you’ve got space, just bury your old junk mail and stuff. It will be gone before you know it.
Randy
We have a woodstove and burn our personal inf. and what isn’t recyclable we burn -the junk mail. I didn’t know there were different types of shredders-thanks.
We are prepared for the big snow storm that is headed our way here in upstate NY. Very cold – 10 degrees.
Arlene
One of the alternative energy companies we work with, uses shredded junk mail for packing.
Without a doubt confetti cut shredders are the way to go for most of us. It’s best to pay a bit more for one rather than buy a crappy strip cut shredder that wont even do the job.