A Saturday shred
Annual shredding event offered
It was a ripping good time Saturday as Crimestoppers and the workplace-apparel and document-management company Cintas offered their second annual shredding service Saturday in the Comstock Funeral Home parking lot on Rubidge St.
For a donation to Crimestoppers, people could have their documents shredded to prevent identity theft.
“It can be anything,” said city police Detective Const. John Stoeckle, the Crimestoppers coordinator. “It can include personal documents, bills, CDs, VCR tapes, any binders containing documents for work, home, anything to do with federal taxes, you name it.”
Identity theft is growing, Stoeckle said, and its practitioners are becoming more sophisticated.
“Basically there are documents floating around that people don’t think are that big a deal,” he said. “But when you have a document out there with your name on it, or your Visa number, or your tax returns, they have your address, SIN birthdate on them.”
Thieves, Stoeckle said, “can use that against you by either going online or trying to use your ID. This is why we tell people to make sure they lock their stuff up, and when they are done with it, get rid of it, and that means shredding it, not just throwing it out.”
Stoeckle said identity thieves are “getting more malicious. They don’t care about the victim’s life. They just want the money.”
People enable thieves and put themselves in jeopardy by being too casual about disposing of their documents, Stoeckle said.
“People get lax about what they think is going to happen to them,” he said. “They don’t realize the potential is there at all times. Thieves are getting more sophisticated. Whereas before they were going into the bigger centres, now they are using this information in smaller, more remote locations.”
Last year, one Cintas truck shredded between 250 and 300 bankers’ boxes of documents, with about 150 people taking advantage of the service.
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