Shred It

Shred It

Now that you have scanned your document and processed the file, what do you do with it?

If it is something that you absolutely must keep a physical copy of, you file it away in your trusted system.

However, you more than likely want to get rid of it now that you have a digital copy.  It’s time to shred.

Why Shred It?

You’re going to be tempted to just throw it in the garbage or, if you are more earth-friendly, in the recycling.  This is an absolute goldmine for identity thieves.

This isn’t going to turn into a big tutorial about identity theft.  The FTC has a great ID Theft minisite, and there are ID Theft protection services out there like LifeLock and TrustedID.

Long story short, if you don’t want to be counted among the millions of identity theft victims every year, your first line of defense is a good shredder.

Which Type Of Shredder Should I Get?

For our purposes, there are 2 kinds: strip-cut and cross-cut.

Get a cross-cut one.  Strip cut shredders output pages that are relatively easy to put back together, so you want something that will shred the heck out of that document.

For The Office

For an office, you will likely be doing a fair bit of shredding. You want something that can take a lot of sheets at once, and doesn’t require you to pull out staples etc.

A really popular shredder is the Fellowes SB-97Cs.

The SB-97Cs takes up to 17 sheets at a time and does both legal and letter sized pages.

It can also take paper clips, staples, credit cards, and CDs which is a great feature. If you have data CDs with sensitive information, you don’t want to just be throwing them in the garbage.

For The Home

For home use you want something that still has good performance, but does not necessarily need to be quite as heavy duty.

I like the Fellowes P-57Cs.

The P-57Cs does 8 pages at a time and can take staples and credit cards no problem.

The most important feature for home use (in my opinion) is the “SafeSense” technology. It senses when hands are getting too close to the opening and stops shredding. If you have curious little ones around (like I do), that’s a great feature.

DocumentSnap Workflow: Scan ItProcess ItBack It Up – Shred It