With so much emphasis being put on security both in terms of our identity and our finances it is important to ensure that every effort is made to make the identity thief’s job as difficult as possible.
One way of doing this is to shred all documents that may contain confidential information that is held by your company and which may allow the identity thief to build up a picture of your clients, either as individuals or families.
The latest estimates state that identity fraud alone costs the UK over £1.7 billion a year. If you think about the amount of paper documents that contain sensitive personal information your company collects over a year you soon realise that you must now take the disposal of these documents seriously to avoid an attack on your identity.
Why Shred Your Documents?
Simply throwing receipts, statements, bills and other financial documents away is now simply unthinkable. Office based businesses have known for decades that properly destroying their most sensitive documents is part of good business practice. Today, paper shredders have moved out of the office and into the home.
The shredder simply makes the sensitive documents you would have previously thrown away very difficult to read any meaningful information. The resulting waste can then be thrown away or recycled safe in the knowledge that all the information that the documents did contain, has been effectively destroyed.
Industrial shredders are designed to cut multiple pages in one pass. Shredders aimed at the home office market are also now capable of cutting multiple sheets. Many of the most advanced shredders can cut six or more A4 pieces of paper in one pass through the shredder. If you have a large number of pages to shred, this feature can be a great bonus.
Criminals need very little information to steal an identity. With a National Insurance number they can apply for credit cards, mobile phones, loans, bank accounts, apartments and utility accounts.
Bins hold a plethora of information. Once personal details or account numbers hits the rubbish, the identity is floating among the refuse, just waiting to be stolen. Shredding is a minimal inconvenience and minor expense compared to its alternative – becoming an identity theft victim.
The disposal rule offers business owners a few choices. They must burn, pulverize or shred paper documents and completely erase or destroy all electronic media. Or, they can contract a third-party information-destruction company.
