Your Garbage: A Treasure Trove for Identity Thieves
Posted in General Blog Information, society on October 31st, 2010Tags: identity, identity theft, identity theft insurance, identity theft protection, preventing identity theft, protecting from identity theft

Be careful of what you throw away! You may not realize it, but the garbage that you throw out on a regular basis contains a wealth of information about you that identity thieves can use to steal your identity right underneath your nose. In fact, until the rise of the Internet becoming one of the primary sources identity thieves use to access your personal information, many of these thieves do so by going through your trash, getting hold of documents that you have thrown away and using the information here to make your identity their own.
In order to make sure that you provide you and your family ample protection from identity theft, here are some things to help you prevent lurking identity thieves from accessing your personal information through your trash.
Before you throw away any paper items, make it a point to completely shred them with a paper shredder that you can easily purchase from your local office supply store. Many people would tend to only shred information sensitive documents. This should not just be limited to documents such as financial documents and receipts. Any paper item that contains any of your personal information is recommended to be shredded before being thrown away in order to minimize the chances of them being used by identity thieves.
Another way to prevent identity theft is to make sure that you white out the back of your expired credit cards where your signature is located before clipping them altogether. Thieves that are able to get a hold of your trash are able to put back thrown out credit cards even after you have clipped them, making them able to gain a sample of your signature and the 3-digit security number at the back of the card, which they can use to gain access to your other personal information.





