Identity theft, new law about to send shredding on a tear

USA TODAY article from Yahoo News ^ | January 14, 2005 | Mindy Fetterman

[dumpdaschle]

Do you shred?

If not, get ready to.

You've heard about shredding. You understand that it's probably a good idea to shred any receipts that have your credit card numbers or other personal information on them to stop identity theft.

You may have seen shredders at the office or noticed bulging trash bags of thin paper strips in the dumpster when you're walking the dog past a local business at night.

But now there's a law with a provision going into effect this summer that says if you employ even one person - a nanny, a yard man - and you have their personal information because you're doing the right thing and paying Social Security (news - web sites) taxes, you have to "destroy" the information before you throw it away.

You have to shred it or burn it or pulverize it.

Or you could get sued. Or fined. Or become part of a class-action lawsuit by enraged nannies whose personal information has somehow gotten out.

[dumpdaschle]

This is government out of control. A small business owner taking personal risks to start a business (and in the process create a job for someone) could get sued or fined if they don't shred a document. As a small business owner I can tell you that you can usually make more money working for someone else. And a lawsuit would create an additional hardship on that employer and possibly put him out of business.... for not shredding a document, basically for no reason at all.

[E. Pluribus Unum]

Law Enforcement Business As Usual: ignore the guilty because they are hard to find and punish the innocent because they are easy to find.

[azhenfud]

This does nothing to those companies that outsource or off-shore your personal or financial information to companies who aren't subject to US courts' jurisdiction.

[DManA]

Everytime you turn around someone's asking you for you SS#. I'd like to see the law enforced banning its use as an ID number(Like it says right on the card ).

[oceanview]

suppose you had an online account with a bank let's say, and they had a security lapse and allowed your personal information to be stolen, and that was used to take money from your account(s) and steal your identity which was then used to take additional credit in you name. can you sue that bank for negligence?

its the same thing here, there is a security obligation on the part of the party holding your personal information - if its released through negligence, and your identify is stolen, its a fair basis for a case.

[2 Kool 2 Be 4-Gotten]

Tip o' the hat to the headline writer.

[pabianice]

I already employ the Feline ShredMaster 2000 (tm)

[antiRepublicrat]

As usual, stupid and ineffective. They require shredding, but you know 90% of the people will just run out and buy a strip shredder, which is useless. It's even more useless since the recent development of reassembling software -- slap the strips on a scanner and it'll return the reassembled image.

[DrDavid]

Law Enforcement Business As Usual: ignore the guilty because they are hard to find and punish the innocent because they are easy to find.

The guilty might also fight back, which would be a terrible inconvenience.

[Atlas Sneezed]

Um, instead of shredding one's nanny's personal documents, coudn't one just give them to her to take home and discard as she prefers?

[festus]

You just can't find any decent help these days......

[TC Rider]

Um, instead of shredding one's nanny's personal documents, coudn't one just give them to her to take home and discard as she prefers?

I've got news for those with Nanny's.

The Nanny's are the threat.

A few of our senior partners have Nanny's. As the IT Manager, I've been recruited to come out to the house and check out the 'strange' behavior of the household computers.

Invariably, they are totally infested with spyware, courtesy of the nanny's sloppy computing habits, swapping music, loading 'smilies', etc.

It seems the Nanny's spend their spare time, when Jr. is napping, to surf, get tunes, IM the folks back in Sweden, etc.

I've found this more times than I can remember.

[Firstfidelity]

A word of advice on shredding for all business owners. Don't use Shred-It. We used Shred It of DC, MD, & VA for our mortgage firm and discovered we were being over billed by their "by the minute fees" I timed them a few times and could not account for the extra 7-10 minutes that were on the invoices - at $3.65 each minute it adds up! I have better use of my time. I called a few other places a found better rates. We shred everything not because of FACTA, HIPPA, or GLB but with all the information we obtain from clients it makes good policy from a liability stand point. We have caught a few creeps and employees stealing office trash.