The holidays will soon be over and it will be time to throw
away all the wrapping paper, boxes and receipts from all the purchases you made
over the past few months. You might find
this crazy but the garbage is the first place a thief will check before they
attempt to enter your home or steal you identity. So when you throw out your
garbage here are a few things to be mindful of before you take your garbage to
the curb on trash day. These tips you should be followed not only now after the
holiday season but anytime when you dispose of your garbage.
When you dispose of boxes large or small take time to break the
boxes down they will fit better in a container but you will not show everyone
what new items you own in your home. You do not want to advertise that new flat
screen or the new cell phone you got for Christmas as this will only make you a
target for identity theft or a home break in. I normally wait until the trash
day to throw out large boxes. I break
the boxes down remove all information from the boxes. You should remove your
name and address off any high value items you had delivered to your residence. Once
I have removed all information from the boxes I then wait until late at night
or the same morning of trash day and take the garbage out this way it is not
out in public view for long period of time.
You need to invest in
a home shredder not only for shredding personal documents but your receipts. A
thief can take your last recent purchase call your credit card company and have
enough information to have a new card sent to the house without your knowledge.
You should be monitoring your bank statements and credit card statements every
month and report any unusual activity. Even the smallest purchase should be
reported the reason is if a person has your credit card information they will
do a test by purchasing something small to see if the transaction goes through
without any problems after the test purchase they will then target high value
items. You can go to
annualcreditreport.com and get one free credit report I would do this at least
once a year after the holiday season. So please shred all you documents. The
starting price for a shredder is normally at $15.00 a small price to pay considering
the potential loss you could have when your identity is stolen.
I hope this post was helpful please leave a comment below
Mark Carvajal
This post is much needed. People today do not understand how easy it is for their identity to be stolen from garbage. I had this happen to a friend of mine a few years back. They did not steal her identity but they broke into her house. As the tax season is upon us and people tend to buy new furniture, electronics etc they fail to realize that by putting the boxes out and not breaking them down or as you said putting them out to early is just saying to robbers "hey look what i got, come and get it!!"
ReplyDeleteI'm glad i came across this site, as i see in one of your other comments on a separate post i too came across one of your cards. I will definitely pass it on to my friends and family. Your advice on safety issues is very helpful.
Hello
ReplyDeleteThank you for your comment
I am sorry about your friend. I wrote this post because I had a similar situation happen to a friend of mine as well after the holidays. When the police eventually caught the perpetrators they had some of the labels of the boxes that were thrown out from the home.
Again thank you for reading
Mark