I’m increasingly conscious of protecting private data, lately. And the other day, when someone offered to give me a paper shredder to augment my new obsession, I happily obliged. I’ve always lived in a pretty small town, and, frankly, didn’t think there was much importance in going to such extremes as shredding receipts and whatnot. After all, this is Jackson; no weirdoes live here. But it soon grew into a haunting thought pattern.
I suppose this obsession started with Ad-Aware. Our Network Administrator installed the software when we got our new machines, and it only took a few trips to the internet for the bugs to start showing up … and then came the revelation of how important this kind of software is. I began studying ways to secure a computer from attack at TweakXP and a few other sites, and I ended up with the safest, fastest machine at the office. Even today—when our “new machines” are now generally referred to as dinosaurs—our NETADMIN has nothing more to say when he sits at my workstation but, “huh.” That’s the greatest feeling in the world!
The physical security kick, however, didn’t start until much more recently. And I honestly don’t know what sparked the change. But it’s been just as exciting learning about this as it has been learning about network security. After all, the two are inseparable. So I got this paper shredder. Reading the box, I noticed it cuts the paper into ¼-inch strips. “Okay,” I thought, while pondering the effectiveness of such large shreds, “I’ll give it a go just to see; maybe my mental ruler is a bit off.” It wasn’t. The shreds were a quarter of an inch wide. There is just no way to sweeten it.
Sending a few sheets through, I could plainly see this was going to be an act of futility; the paper was still somewhat legible. And it didn’t take long to fill up the wastebasket, either, as the shreds were stuck together. Stuck together! The pieces were not only marginally readable; the rest of the puzzle was pre-assembled and divided into neat, little sections. So I tossed the shredder on the top shelf of my closet. My reasoning behind that, as opposed to outright trashing it, was there might come along another ignorant sap uninformed person looking for a false sense of security. (While I’m on the subject, I’ve got a lovely paper shredder for sale. It’s practically new!) It is easy to see why this machine was given to me in the first place.
About a week ago I received a letter. It wasn’t very long. And it wasn’t terribly important, but it was written on card stock and looked like it would be a fun shred. Amazingly enough, the shredder barely whimpered at the thick paper. And even more surprisingly, it cut all the way through. It still dropped it in a neat pile, though. I never actually thought I’d need the letter; I already knew what it said. But Friday I got another letter from the same organization, and this one required a letter back. I still remembered everything in the original letter … except the sender’s name.
So, into the wastebasket I dove. It took all of five minutes to find the necessary pieces of the puzzle, and since it was on card stock, the pieces laid on the floor quite nicely. This brings me to the point of this entire story: shredding paper with a typical, store-bought paper shredder isn’t effective against identity theft. The ease at which I rebuilt the letter wasn’t just because of the card stock, as I reassembled a few receipts out of curiosity. There is a better way to completely obliterate sensitive paper, and I’ve got a few ideas tumbling around in my mind. For now, though, I’m going to take these shreds and burn them. At least in their shredded state they’ll burn more completely. The next step for me is to get my idea for a paper shredder patented. The machine I have in mind will transform your paper quite nearly into dust. And as for the reply letter, I sent it off Monday afternoon without a hitch.
~Jonathan
Photographs
Digging for gold.
Score.
The receipts didn’t want to lay flat like the card stock did, so I had to persuade them.
Now we’re getting somewhere.
I didn’t need to find this many pieces to make my point, but it helps.
And here we have the signature of the person who sent the letter. Game over.
Burn this feed.
On January 15th, 2007, at 4:47 pm
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