With tax time behind us for another year now is the perfect time to talk about personal information security. If you watch television or read the paper you have no doubt seen the ever increasing number of instances where schools, collages, stores and even the federal government has become unforgiving sloppy with our personal data. With few exceptions data that most of these places shouldn’t even have to start with.

When it comes to stores like the recent TJ Max mess stores shouldn’t even have had that information. The information should enter their system go right out to the credit card company the money should be instantly transferred to their account and the personal information destroyed. This should all be happening seconds after your credit or debit card is swiped. There is no need for any of the companies to keep this personal information for any period of time. The problem is that the banking industry likes to collect the loan shark like interest rates from those of us sucker enough to use our credit cards but they don’t want to spend the money to update their systems so that these transactions happen within seconds. Just like the stores and the credit card companies don’t want it that to be that quick so that when a credit is issued to you because you made a return that credit is on your account before you walk out of the stores door. Why don’t they want things like that to be done instantly? Because then the store looses out on the interest they get for having it in their account and the credit card company I am sure looses a little money too.

Until these companies stop letting greed and a great deal of sloppy stupidity run things it is ever more important that we take the time to do everything we can on our end to protect ourselves. And, that includes making sure that no piece of paper with our name, address, phone number, account number, social security number or any other personal identifiable bit of information ever makes it in to our trash without it first being shredded.

I am totally serious about this, even a bit of junk mail that has nothing more than your name and address on it should be shredded. Why? Because not only would a crook have your name and address they would know something more about you. Things like what charities you give to, possibly who your doctor is and things like that. Yes, even something as simple as a post card from a charity that nothing more than your name and address tells a crook a lot. Let alone a post card reminder of a doctor’s appointment or that you need to come in for lab tests or you need your teeth cleaned.

Everything that has any personal information no matter how small or insignificant it may seem should be shredded. For that you need to a good quality cross cut shredder. Yes, a cross cut shredder, not a strip shredder that simply shreds the paper in to strips. Surprisingly enough it isn’t all that hard to reassemble documents that have been shredded with a strip shredder. Instead you want the cross cut that cuts the paper in to tiny little bits.

There are many models and brands available in a wide range of prices. But, besides shredding paper you also want one that can shred CDs, credit cards and the like. With the number of CD and DVD burners in people’s homes one should just like with paper make sure that no CD or DVD or credit card ends up in your trash without it first being chopped to bits. Simply cutting a CD, DVD or credit card in to a couple of pieces does not mean the data is gone or the card can’t be reassembled and used with phone orders. As for the cut up CDs the portions that aren’t cut up still has your data on it and that can be read by someone with half a brain, while they may only get bits and pieces of what was on the disc that could be enough. No a shredder that does paper, CDs, DVDs, credit cards is what you want and you want one that once again chops them in to bits.

If you don’t want to spend the time looking for a shredder I can suggest the Royal 160MX Photo, it has the following features:

• 16-sheet crosscut paper shredder the ultimate in document security
• Shreds up to 16 sheets in a single pass
• Full size console with locking casters for easy mobility
• 26 liter pull-out wastebasket
• Auto start/stop automatically senses paper and shreds it
• Auto reverse
• Patented jam-free rollers reduce paper jams and clogs
• Shreds paper into small 5/32" x 1 1/8" pieces
• Shreds staples, CDs and DVDs
• Approximate dimensions: 26"H x 18"W x 14"D

I have used this unit for several months and have been impressed with how flawlessly it has worked. I have not had a single jam and I like the fact that I can put a plastic bag in the wastebasket as my garbage collection company wants the shredded paper put in to a plastic trash bag and not just dumped in the trash bin. For around $100 to $170 (online, depending on the place) I think it is a great value. This unit is designed for moderate use and that would means it will handle just about any shredding job a household might need.

Now a shredder takes care of your real world personal information. Now we need to talk about your computer and your digital personal information. There are several things you can do to ensure that your computer and the data on your computer is safe.

1. If you have a home network make sure that the password and access code for your router isn’t left at the factory default. If you do leave it at the factory default then anyone with one brain cell can gain access to it and that makes it easier for them to gain access to your computer.
2. If you have a wireless network I strongly suggest you bone up on wireless network security and make sure that your wireless network isn’t out there broadcasting itself to everyone that drives by your house or office. In my neighborhood alone there are 18 wireless signals that I can access without restriction and that means I can access any piece of hardware they have connected to it. This is not good. At the end of this article I have listed a couple of books I highly recommend that can help you get your wireless network security up to snuff. Wired networks are much safer but not nearly as convenient. With a wired network one has to gain physical access to the cables and this is much harder to do. In fact they would have break in to your house to do it.
3. Don’t rely on the delete or erase command to get rid of data on your discs. On hard drives, floppy drives and other media that you can read and write to over and over erasing a file, folder, etc. only erases the directory table. So when you look at the directory on the disc you don’t see the file, but the file is there and can easily be recovered. It will remain there until you overwrite it. However, you can never know for sure when that will happen. I highly recommend that if you need to erase a file and you want to make sure it is lost and gone forever that you use a program that wipes the data clean. These programs overwrite the file several times with random bits of trash or zeros or ones or something like that ensuring that the data cannot be recovered. I have been using a free open source program called Eraser. It is for Windows only. For other platforms do a search for secure file erasing software, secure file delete, secure file wipe, etc. and you will get tons of options. I try to use and support open source whenever possible. You can get more information about Eraser at: http://www.heidi.ie/eraser/
4. If you upgrade your computer and find yourself with a hard drive you don’t want. Don’t count of formatting it to get rid of the data on it. Hard drives that have been formatted especially with a quick format are like erased files, they can be recovered. Either fill the disk full with junk you don’t care about, I like to use clipart CDs, once the drive is full I then format it using a non-quick format. You can also delete the partitions, repartition it and then format it with a non-quick format. Should anyone recover data from the drive it will be the clipart and not your personal information. This method assuming you have lots of clipart to do it with is time consuming but it works. However… Better still get one of the utilities that will do all of this for you. It works like a secure file erasing program as it fills the drive up with patterns of junk or zeros, etc. It does this several times. While these programs can be slow there is no recovering the data once this done. Especially if you then delete the drives partitions, create new ones and do a non-quick format.

However, you secure your hard drive before getting rid of it, make sure you do. Also, just so you know taking a hammer or even a strong magnet to the drive isn’t good enough. Unless the discs inside the drive that holds the data are destroyed the discs can be removed from your drive and placed in another and the data accessed. As for a magnet, well you would be surprised at just how strong a magnet you would have to use in order to completely and totally wipe the drive clean to the point data couldn’t be recovered. What would happen at best is you corrupt some of the data, now Murphy’s Law being what it is and all it would probably turn out to be your shopping list or something like that got corrupted and your personal information was just fine. At worst it would make no difference at all. So use one of the suggestions above. There are some good free disc wiping programs available. I like Eraser once again; it does both files and entire hard drive. See above for the web site address.

In this day and age it is easier than ever to accidentally allow your personal information to fall in to the wrong hands. You have control over you allowing your data out in to the wild. You don’t unfortunately have much control over the businesses and the government who instead of treating your personal information like a prized passion, allows sloppy careless people to walk around with it on their notebook computers, CDs, DVDs, etc. Until laws come in to play that gives the owner of the personal information (that would be you and me) control over who gets it, whether or not they can keep it and what they can do with it, businesses and government will always be the weak link. Please don’t let yourself be another weak link. Protect your data, when you don’t need it make sure it is destroyed and lost forever.