New Year, Same Secure Document Shredding Rules

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With the Advent of the New Year Comes the Opportunity to Securely Shred Personal Documents.

An important, but ignored resolution among losing weight and saving money is finally focusing on your identity and credit health. Now is the perfect time to “start over” and have your personal affairs put into order by having your documents securely shredded.

According to Yahoo Finance there are 8 important things that you should always securely shred:

Old Tax Returns
- The typical half-life of a tax return is three years. Keep old tax returns safely secured from three to four years, and if you have no reason to be audited, you have no reason to hold onto them.
Bank Statements
- If you still haven’t made the switch to online paperless statements, there is no reason to hold on to these for more than a couple of months. Anything not recent, shred it.
Credit Card Offers
- Unless you are planning on taking an advantage of an offer you’ve received you should shred these right away. If they’ve piled up in your drawer, it’s a great time to shred them now.
Old Photo IDs
- The more information kept on an old ID, such as a driver’s license, the greater the reason to have it shredded.
Pay Stubs
- Beside a bevy of personal information, pay stubs may also include pieces of information such as your healthcare provider and bank accounts.
Credit Card Convenience Checks
- Basically an inconvenience that credit card companies try to use to get you to quickly borrow more of your available balance, there is virtually no reason to keep these. Include the ones you may have kept in your New Years shred.
Canceled Checks
- Filled with your address, banking account and routing numbers, and with little value when you have a receipt from the recipient of these checks, there’s little to no reason to hold on to them.
Canceled Credit Cards
- If the magnetic strip is not properly destroyed the information on it is still recoverable. There’s no good reasons to hold onto expired cards. Add this to your shredding resolution.

Once you’ve taken the necessary steps, you will have eliminated numerous sources of possible identity theft, but there are still ways you can be exposed.

If you think you’ve been a victim of identity theft:

If you take a smart approach to 2015, securely store your valuable documents, and shred those you do not need anymore, you can control of your identity health. Reducing the risk of identity theft can be a resolution that potentially pays you.

We regularly provide Kenosha, Racine and Southeast Wisconsin with our mobile on site secure paper shredding services. If you need you personal or work documents securely shredded you can count on us.