Protecting Yourself From Identity Theft: The Ultimate Prevention?

By all accounts it was a pretty good turnout. The Safety and Wellness Festival in La Vista Nebraska drew a huge crowd over the weekend and many brought their trash with them which was okay with Festival officials. Why? Because there was a shredding party going on. To be more specific personal information like medical bills and financial statements were brought by residents to be destroyed. The point of course was to remove as much personal information as possible so identity thieves would be left out in the cold. The Federal Trade Commission estimates that over one thousand Nebraskans were victims of identity theft last year. While it pales in comparison to other states (Arizona is number one) people were not taking any chances. rnHow much was shredded? According to Brian Latham of WOWT in Omaha, "Saturday, a truck shredded 5,000 pounds worth of paperwork. By Sunday morning it had done another 1,000 pounds." That's a good indicator that many people are taking identity theft seriously. It also serves as a pretty decent advertisement for investing in a shredder. While we may be living in a digital age we still use a lot of paper. Many companies offer their customers the opportunity to eliminate receiving their billing or financial statements via paper and just do everything online. It is an option but they are in the minority. As a society it is seriously doubtful that we will ever be one hundred percent paper free so it makes sense to buy a good shredder. Preferably the cross cutting kind. It can go along way to protecting you just like being judicious with sharing your personal information online, in a department store or over the phone can. However it cannot prevent you from being a victim of identity theft. The main reason being too much of your personal information is already out there. Federal and State governments have documentation and so do places that you have been employed. Not to say that they would use them but we all for lack of a better term have a paper trail. We have also heard about the high profile data breaches that are permeated it seems like every other day. Just recently a Miami Florida man confessed to running an international identity theft ring that stole forty million credit and debit cards. The victims of that data breach did nothing wrong but the circumstances were out of there control. That is not to say you should not be like the Nebraska citizens who showed up to make sure their personal information was properly disposed of. Actions like that go a long way toward reducing the risk. In fact they could have saved themselves carfare by just going to their nearest hardware store, plunking down a few dollars and buying a shredder. It is to say however with the age we live in there unfortunately no guarantees that any of else can ever completely avoid being victims of identity theft and fraud.