Gildner and Associates are founders of this annual event
Bring $5 donation to support the SPCA Serving Allegany County
By Andrew Harris
Do you have piles of old paperwork, bank statements from 1997 ? There is no need keep a closet full old paperwork when you have two local businesses ready to help you declutter and simplify your records.
This is the 6th Annual “Shred it” event that Gildner and Associates have provided to the Wellsville community. This year ALCO is on board and hosting the event at their Bolivar Road Wellsville location. Everyone is welcome to this free community event. The two businesses have hired the professionals at Shred-it with Stericycle of Rochester to bring in a professional shredding truck for this event. Throwing away documents with your personal or confidential information may seem harmless, but it can leave you open to fraud and identity theft. Protect your information by taking advantage of this shredding event to drop off any confidential papers for on-site destruction.
Why, What, and When to Shred Documents?
Sometimes, to avoid clutter at home or work, we create piles of mail or documents hoping to organize them later. Even worse, to get a handle on cleaning our desks and counters, we even consider throwing everything in a wastebasket just to avoid having to go through each piece. If you’re storing things digitally, you can retain much more than any filing cabinet could hold, making it easy to take a more liberal approach to what you save.
Why Shred?
“Dumpster diving,” or rifling through trash cans for personal information, is a tactic used by identity thieves to get their hands on documents they can use to impersonate someone. As much as you may want to get rid of items, throwing away materials that have information about you or your family creates a cause for concern. By shredding sensitive materials, you reduce the risk of identity theft.
To destroy all sensitive information, invest in a shredder for your home or office, preferably one that “cross-cuts” (i.e., slices in two directions) or a strip-cut shredder. You can also consider contacting a trusted business in your community and ask if you can use their shredder. If your shredder can’t handle plastic, use scissors to cut up expired credit and identification cards before discarding them. Remember that if you opt into receiving materials electronically, you not only help the environment by reducing paper use, you also reduce the risk of someone rummaging through your discarded hard-copy documents.
What to Destroy?
What constitutes “sensitive information?” In general, you should shred documents that contain any of the following:
- Social security number
- Any account number or credit or debit card number (with or without any required security code) Access code, PIN, or password that would permit access to an individual’s account
- Date of birth
- Any information related to a financial account, including type of account, suitability information, holdings, and financial advice
- Driver’s license number or state-issued identification card number Any medical-related information
- Signatures
