Comments on: Could your identity be stolen by throwing away junk mail that you receive at home?

By: The Mr. Pine

The Mr. Pine — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 19:54:50 +0000

Not very likely. If you don’t open it, it is a felony for others to do so.

By: Real_Pizza_man

Real_Pizza_man — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 19:49:57 +0000

Shred if it has personal information like bank accounts , credit card offers, medical information. Now you can take it to the extreme and just shred all mail so no one can dig through your trash and find anything.

By: Máire Siobhán

Máire Siobhán — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 19:41:20 +0000

Shread it.

I get a lot of catalogs and junk mail offers. I pull off the catalog back page and the inside page with my name and address, put it in a big “yard waste” type of brown bag with every other personalized junk mail that I get, and once a year I take the bags I’ve accumulated (usually 2 or 3) in to have the stuff shreaded. I figure if I’ve ordered from a catalog, then they have my payment info. The people who do the identity theft are smart enough to put my name, address, and retailer together to try and order things that way through my name, or hack into either my e-mail account, or the retailer’s web site, etc. There may be easier ways for them to to figure this all out and rip me off, but I figure since I know identity theft is an issue, why help anyone connect the dots on my end?

This isn’t even too far fetched. Two weeks ago, I started getting e-mails one morning from ebay (10, actually) saying that my bids had been accepted. Well, I hadn’t placed any bids. Scanning down my e-mail in-box, I also saw three e-mails from PayPal saying they had a request to change my password. I jumped to e-bay, and someone had changed my password there. I couldn’t get into my e-bay account. Same thing with PayPal account. Someone had hacked into something of mine, maybe my e-mail account, and now had access to information on who knows what that I had in there?

I immediately jumped to my online bank account, to see if anyone had purchased anything out of my checking account through PayPal, and they had not. I alert my bank that something was up, and they told me to monitor the account online throughout the day, and told me what to do if there were any unauthorized charges through PayPal. I contacted ebay security thru their live chat, and they helped cancel the bids. I reset my password with them (and I took much more seriously the guidelines they give for creating a SECURE password). Then I dealt with PayPal. I also changed my e-mail account password.

My point being that IT HAPPENS, and it’s much, much easier to take precautions then to clean up a mess. Often the mess takes a lot longer than the few hours that it took me. Good thing I check my e-mail frequently!

So, shread things that have any personal info on them!

By: Laci S

Laci S — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 18:56:59 +0000

depends who its from and if you’ve actually done business with them . doubt most true junk mail would have anything useful in it .
but when in doubt shred it .

By: LittleB

LittleB — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 18:54:37 +0000

Yes, of course it can. You should make sure that anything with your personal details on it is shredded before it is placed in the bin. If it is something that could be used in an identity check – things like bank statements and household bills (utility bills etc) then I always go as far as burning the sheets of paper. Destroy anything with your personal details on it rather than just throwing it away – you never know where it will end up.
The worst thing about this is that if someone does steal your ID, money etc – then the banks etc will not pay up if they can prove that you did not protect your details. If you don’t look after then then dont expect others to do it.

By: PANGTA

PANGTA — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 18:15:51 +0000

shred all sensitive information’s

By: ProfessorC

ProfessorC — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 17:23:57 +0000

Yes you never know what people can put together from various sources.

By: rhsaunders

rhsaunders — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 16:42:32 +0000

Depends on how junky it is. Anything from a bank or other financial institution offering credit must be destroyed.

By: LandOfMisty

LandOfMisty — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 15:43:07 +0000

Oh my gosh….YES

All a person has to do is grab one of those Already Approved Credit Card enrollments and change your address.

By: dizzy

dizzy — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 15:30:06 +0000

I put everything with my name and address through the shredder, that way I don’t have to worry about it.