Shredding Some Light On It
I want to talk about something nobody ever
talks about in public. And it’s a dark, messy and dangerous place.
Get your mind out of the gutter.
I’m talking about your personal document
shredder.
Right now, mine is upside down, unplugged
and glaring at me with an unwanted credit card solicitation stuck in its
teeth. I hate my shredder.
Remember the days when you’d get mail,
read it and throw it away? So simple, so Twentieth Century.
Now that the credit poohbahs have convinced
us that every unshredded missive is an open invitation to an identity
thief, I have become a slave to my shredder. I fight with it. I shriek at
it. I have been known to wish it was dead. When my first shredder actually
died, I had Jewish guilt.
It wasn’t always this way. Back in the
day, when I first took up shredding, I loved my shredder. What fun it was
watching unwanted bank statements and old tax returns disappear into the
maw to become confetti.
It was pretty easy, too. Three piles: file,
shred, toss.
Now it’s file, shred, toss, recycle. If
the dollar sinks any lower it will be file, shred, toss, recycle or save
for toilet paper.
How did this happen?
We heard about shredders for years, with
our national security agencies using them to protect covert operations and
corporate accounting firms using them to hide major fraud. Shredders let
them get away with murder, both literally and figuratively.
But a shredder at home? What for?
Then came the credit police, along with
cable newscasters eager to fill up that 24-hour news cycle, warning of
terrifying identity theft tales. They convinced us that bypassing the
shredder with a single envelope with our names, never mind an actual
invoice sporting an account number, means you might as well be selling
your identity on E-Bay.
So I got into shredding. My latest shredder
(that I’ve owned the same number of shredders in my lifetime as I have
owned coffee pots is scary) is a Professional, Heavy Duty, Cross Cut Paper
Shredder with auto reverse, steel gear construction and the ability to
destroy CDs and Credit Cards. I so wish I had destroyed the credit cards
before I abused them.
As for the destruction of CDs, I have to
admit great pleasure in trying out the machine with old Barry Manilow
albums. I shred the songs that make the whole world sing.
But the truth is, it’s tricky business
this shredding. Last week I accidentally sent a CD through the paper slot
and the shredder ground to a halt like a politician caught with a call
girl.
I spent the better part of that afternoon
extracting CD shards from the shredder with a tweezers. And don’t ever
step on a compact disk sliver in your bare feet. My instep needed tweezers
surgery.
I’d like to calculate how many hours a
week I spend shredding bank statements, credit reports, charge receipts,
insurance forms and old checks. And we can’t forget about all the
pre-approved credit card applications with their tempting pre-approved
checks.
Those damn things just beg to be stolen so
some low life can charge you for a trip to Vegas. I know that what happens
in Vegas stays there, but I don’t want it to be my credit rating.
I’m telling you, worrying about this
stuff can turn you into a paranoid nut job wanting to cancel all your
credit cards, close your savings accounts and start hiding your money in
tomato cans in the back yard.
Remember the promise of a paperless
society? This isn’t it, unless we’ve traded an eight-and-a-half by
eleven society for confetti world.
And speaking of tiny speckles of paper,
yesterday, I failed to put the plastic storage bucket back into the
shredder properly and came home to discover two sheepish Schnauzers and a
den floor that looked like a parade route after the Red Sox won the
pennant.
So now I’m looking at my upended,
constipated shredder, wondering if I have to purchase yet another
anti-identity theft device. By the way, my 1997 coffee pot is still
brewing just fine.
I go online and read the ads for shredders.
I can choose from The Shredmaster, Powershred Plus, Destroyit Heavy-Duty,
Intimus (what does it shred, Hustler and condoms?), and my personal
favorite, Intellishred. If it were truly intelligent it would have figured
out a different way to deter dumpster divers by now. They also offer
machines with child-locks, which, I assume, double as Schnauzer locks.
I have learned that the average heavy-duty
shredder feeds 26-30 sheets at a time at 30 feet per minute. I imagine
that will be useful to clean up after the Bush Administration. And I loved
the ad for a continuous shredding heavy duty model for non-stop shredding
24-hours a day.
What kind of business needs round the clock
shredding now that Enron is gone?
But here’s the really frightening truth
about protecting your identity and the sanctity of garbage: there has now
been a documented rash of scams taking money from frightened consumers for
Identity Fraud Protection.
It’s probable that some of the shady
characters who dove in dumpsters to steal identities in the first place
may now be going door-to-door selling phony protection against such
despicable acts. Unscrupulous companies are all over cyberspace selling
identity theft protection for a mere $14.99 per month.
These services, with names like Trusted
I.D., Privacy Protector and LifeLock (heck, I’d subscribe to Jaw Lock if
they would stop sales calls at dinner time), are lurking everywhere, ready
to sell us our privacy back.
Well I don’t want it. Take my identity,
please. I’ll forward the bills.
As for replacing my shredder, the jury is
still out. After all, every day I send out dozens of pieces of
correspondence with name and address all over them, even as I spend time
feeding the shredder with similar information.
Face it. It doesn’t make a shred of
sense.
Fay Jacobs is the author of As I Lay Frying—a Rehoboth
Beach Memoir and Fried & True—Tales from Rehoboth Beach. Contact her
at www.fayjacobs.com.
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