Document shredding is an important process that all businesses should undertake as a regular priority. There are multiple reasons why document shredding makes sense for any business, whether first starting out or a large business with multiple office locations and hundreds of employees. In the US in particular there is a real reason to be scared of identity theft and here we take a look at the reasons why thieves of this nature do not like document shredding services. It is a real and accurate deterrent against crime of this nature and helps to protect both private individuals and huge companies from the negative effects of identity theft.
The vast majority of identity theft and fraud in the US can be linked back to physical paper information. This is seen most commonly in identity theft taken from a stolen or lost wallet, paper mail that has been stolen from someone’s rubbish bins, other stolen mail, or a fraudulent change of address.
Worrying about thieves stealing your information and data from your rubbish bins is not unfounded. In the US this is especially prevalent where a Supreme Court case from 1988 deemed that trash is public property if it has been placed curbside for the waste management companies to pick up. This is perfect for identity thieves looking for easy pickings.
Document shredding in these cases ensures that any information that could be used to steal your identity or use your information in fraudulent ways is no longer of any use to thieves. With regular and accurate document shredding you can ensure that it becomes a positive habit to dispose of your paper waste in a way that makes it completely unidentifiable, and therefore complete unusable, for any person who happens to find it.
With GDPR in the past year or more there has been a real change in approach to the storage and disposal of business documents and document shredding services are one easy way in which you can improve the processes you have in place to keep information and data relating to your employees, suppliers, and customers’ safe from harm.
It is important to remember that document shredding really does shred pieces of paper down into miniscule sizes that make them completely incomprehensible to those looking at it. Document shredding isn’t only for paper though, it can also be used to shred large folders, binder clips, rubber bands, hard drives, and countless other materials that might contain personal and sensitive information that must legally be disposed of in an effective and timely fashion.
Working with a professional document shredding service provides you with a document of destruction to prove that you are working within strict data privacy laws and not holding on to information longer than you are legally meant to. It is also a cost-effective way to deal with regular paper waste and to send paper waste to be recycled, helping to reduce the carbon footprint of your business and to work in a ‘greener’ way.
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