Shredding
I confess that I am at least mariginally paranoid. I always lock doors – good habits make good security. I never answer calls from numbers my phone doesn’t recogonize – if they really want to talk to me they’ll leave a message. I regularly shred personal data in my incoming snail mail – it is, by definition, personal.
In addition I am, could we say, thrifty. I don’t have an industrial strength paper shredder.
So I go through the stack of mail and pull out all that needs to be dealt with and or/filed (actually a not very big pile). The rest I go through and tear out the personal information. Names and addresses mostly.
It’s a minor hassel but it keeps me functioning and it’s cheaper than trying to cure my neurosises. And it’s usually pretty easy. One or two little patches to rip out and shred and drop the rest into the recyling bin.
But there are some advertising missives that are five or more pages in length and have personal information, often in several locations, on each and every page.
And sometimes there is heavy, glossy paper. Colorful and attractive but a little much for my entry level shredder. I have to separate sheets and pay attention to the little motor overheating. There are occasionally staples too but if they are small the shredder can handle them. The worst are the imitiation credit cards. These come with my name on them and text indicating very low interest rates on piles of easily obtainable cash. These are demanding to be shredded and they have to be pulled away from some larger sheet of paper and feed individualy through the shredder. Usually there is a wad of sticky stuff that also needs to be dealt with.
I am sure there is rational for why this strategy is effective. But if they think they are more likely to be getting there message through to driven shredders.like me they are mistaken. When their little bundles get my attention it is to reexamine my internal debate over actually finally writing that letter to the better business bureau or perhaps contacting an attorney and to explore the possiblility of bringing a class action lawsuite (aiding and abetting identity theft.)
The issue of course is that it is very unlikely that suspicious tight wads like me are the target demographic. Additionally, the people running the ad campaigns are most certainly a lot smarter than I am to begin with and putting together these little bundles of joy is their profession. I’m quite sure they know what they’re doing.
That said, I would suggest that they could make a little more money by including in their mailings a coupon offer on an upscale shredder.
