Knowing what to shred is the first step.
Identity theft. The words strike fear into every consumer’s heart. We’ve heard the horror stories about how it can take years—literally years—to straighten out the mess an ID theft can cause. But still, we slide. We throw out that paid credit-card bill, we don’t check for the little “s” after the “http” in URLs where we shop. And we click on e-mails from places we don’t know just because the deal seems so good.
In our March issue, on newsstands now, we give you lots of great advice about protecting your identity by shredding documents and old bills, plus we tell you what the three top shredders were in our recent tests. (Here’s a hint: you don’t need to spend a lot to find a good shredder!) Do you know what you absolutely need to shred? Credit-card info (duh!), monthly bills, workplace documents, financial statements, old IDs, and medical forms. But you should even shred mail from companies you’ve done business with!
We also remind you about what NOT to do when shopping. Not that you don’t already know this, but DON’T give out any account numbers or personal information in response to a too-good-to-be-true e-mail! And when you’re out shopping, don’t use a public wireless connection to shop. You just never know where crooks might be waiting to capture that info.
We want you to be safe in 2012, so learn to cut your risk!
Ron Bombard
09:35:21 PM on Mon Jan 9 2012
I was interested in the article on getting wax off of things. A few years ago I had to clean up wax all over new carpet. A friend of mine runs a janitorial business and he told me how to take a warm iron over a brown paper bag and it sucked up the wax wonderfully. He really saved my bacon as this was a new carpet in the church.