Shred These Documents: 20 Documents You Must Shred!
1. Bank and brokerage information and statements, including ATM and deposit slips
2. Canceled Checks – that is if your bank returns them still
3. Client lists – You brought it home to work on, shred it or bring it back to work
4. Credit card receipts, but only once you are satisfied with your purchase and you have reconciled your statement
5. Credit reports – You should be getting your report regularly to protect against ID theft.
6. Expired credit and debit cards cards, drivers licenses, and any ID cards
7. Anything storing electronic data like CD’s burned on your computer, or old floppy disks
8. Envelopes your mail comes in. Sometimes just knowing where you have an account is enough for an ID thief
9. Bills you get in the mail. Do yourself and the environment a favor and sign up for electronic delivery of bills, and use electronic bill payment at the bank. You save the paper, and the gas to drive the bill to you.
10. Insurance papers, bills, policies or other documents.
11. Junk mail, especially offers for credit. You can opt-out of receiving credit offers and protect yourself from that one area of possible identity theft.
12. Telephone bills – If you have to get paper bills make sure you opt not to get every call listed. Most companies offer that option.
13. Covers of magazines with your address on them
14. Social Security information.
15. Employment records, offer letters, resumes, 401k statements
16. School transcripts
17. Pay-stubs – No need to tell the world what you make
18. Obsolete business stationary – a con artist could easily take a sheet and write a letter and look like you.
19. Tax records
20. Anything with your signature on it
Buy a shredder if you have not already done so. Staples sells a great small shredder you can keep it right where you open your mail. They often have specials on it like this week where after rebate it costs just $20. I’ve read that junk mail makes great compost. As much as I’d like to help the world, putting that out there just makes me uneasy. Not sure it is any worse than throwing the shreds on the garbage truck, it is likely better.
Do you have any suggestions or ideas of documents to shred that are not on this list? Post a comment and let everyone know.
[...] out these other posts on GetMeApprovedToday about identity theft: Shred These Documents: 20 Documents You Must Shred! and Identity Theft Resources – The tools you [...]