Few people would argue that when it becomes time to get rid of paperwork that contains sensitive information, that it should be eliminated completely. This sensitive information might be the handwritten journals that someone kept in college containing information beneficial to no other person in the world, or perhaps love letters associated with a failed and bitterly regretted relationship, or just the reams of financial information about former clients collected over time by a financial institution. Regardless of the type of sensitive information in view, the fact is that when such information is destroyed, it should be permanently destroyed, for all time.
Surprisingly, this doesn’t always happen. The woman who decided to burn her journals and love letters walked away from the fire and failed to realize that her secrets did not burn completely. Remnants were left behind, remnants that either blew her most intimate secrets via the wind into her neighbor’s backyard, or that left them behind in the fireplace for her husband to find at the end of a hard day’s work. Businesses that choose to handle the Confidential Shredding of paper records in-house often find that the thoroughness with which such records are obliterated often has a direct correlation to the trustworthiness of the employee tasked with their destruction. A far better method of disposal is to use a professional within the industry like Shred Confidential (Goshredconfidential.com) to handle the careful disposal of your proprietary information for you.
Using a professional means of Confidential Shredding protects you from being prosecuted, because the info won’t show up somewhere down the road and subject you to criminal charges for failing to properly respect confidential data. Every effort should be taken to ensure that confidential information doesn’t ultimately end up in the hands of those who would abuse it. What kinds of proprietary data should be treated with this level of respect? There are many: client listings, personnel files, receipts and expense account info, patient or client data, correspondence, sales records, sales records, research on competitors, and more. These types of files contain things like social security numbers, license numbers, birth and death dates, etc. -; all the info necessary to steal another person’s identity, which is perhaps the direst consequence of improper records disposal of all.
