Cross Cut Shredders

Utilizing paper shredders is a great habit and great practice.

Utilizing paper shredders is a great habit and great practice. It isn't classified information that paper shredders are fantastic for demolishing private information and keeping individual identities safe. After saying this, a few paper shredders are better at shredding paper than other shredders.

The largest difference is the shredded paper size after the paper has been shredded. The other day, as I was answering a few inquiries on Yahoo Answers I found an individual who wondered if it was alright to utilize scissors to cut up applications for credit cards.

I nearly gasped in shock at this question. After the shock, I posted my solution to this inquiry. Here is basically what I said: Using scissors to cut up an application for a credit card, or any other paper with sensitive information on it; is definitely better than not cutting it up at all, yet it won't provide you enough safety from identity thieves.

Paper that has been cut with scissors is pretty simple to piece back together if an individual has enough time to do it. The majority of thieves will not do this, yet, there a few that do.

There are real cases which have been documented of applications of credit cards that have been pieced back together with tape, completed, and sent back to the credit card company! To say it using basic words, cutting or tearing up private information is not going to work.

Then, I explained how to correctly destroy paper. You must shred all paper that has information on it that you do not desire other people to view. You may utilize an electric paper shredder to do this.

It is important to not only utilize a regular paper shredder, you really should use a cross cut shredder (also known as particle cut shredders or confetti cut shredders).

Merely using strip cut paper shredders will not cut it (pardon the pun). Strip cut shredders cut documents into a quarter of an inch and once in awhile one-eighth inch document strips. These paper strips, even though they are a lot harder to put back together, can be put back together.

This was proven by basket weavers from Iran after the United States embassy was overrun in the seventies. Sensitive United States government papers were put back together and in the end were really easy to read.

You may view these documents that were put back together on Wikipedia. In sum, using cross-cut shredders is the only method that will keep your information safe.

The shredder's head blades cut the document into two different directions, one up and down, and the other sideways. There continues to be a large range of various cross cut shredders based on the particle's document.

This is typically referred to as the paper shredder's security level. I suggest using a security level of three or more. For high security shredding, use level 5 or level 6, but these are not typically necessary for office or home utilization.

Make sure you realize that the littler the particle, the less sheets which can be shred at any particular time period because of stress placed upon the motor and blades.