I work from home, so I get to see all the various foot traffic through the neighborhood during the day.  One day, I caught a guy going through people’s trash cans in the alley behind our house.

I immediately told him to get lost, and then called the cops.  To my great surprise, the dispatcher actually argued with me as to whether going through people’s trash was a crime!  I asked him if he’d ever heard of identity theft.  He still wasn’t helpful, so I reported him to the block captain for our neighborhood watch.

Still, it’s obvious that the cops around here aren’t necessarily going to be of any help in preventing identity theft.  So after catching that guy, I invested in a paper shredder.  Anything that has my information on it — anything at all — gets run through that shredder before I put it into the trash.

Identity thieves are often resourceful folks, so you need to be really careful.  They can piece together your identity from lots of different pieces of trash — a signature here, an address there, etc.  They can also piece together documents that aren’t shredded finely enough.  Home shredders or older paper shredders sometimes don’t shred documents into small enough pieces, making it too easy for someone to piece it back together.  High security shredders do the best job of making sure any information is obliterated.

I learned from catching this guy in our trash, and from the dispatcher’s nonchalance when I called the cops, that protecting your identity is really up to you.  A paper shredder may be the best investment you ever make!

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