Utah's AG encourages shredding
By Cathy Mckitrick
The Salt Lake Tribune
Updated: 10/05/2009
There are many ways to steal someone's identity, but the result is often the same -- devastating personal loss with no easy remedy.
"It's one of the fastest growing crimes in Utah," said Scott Morrill, project manager for the state attorney general's investigative division. "If someone uses your Social Security number, it can take years to resolve it."
However, people can protect themselves if they take simple precautions -- and habitually shredding mail and other identifying documents is a good place to start.
That is the message that Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff hopes to convey as his office hits the road with its "time-to-shred" tour.
"This tour will be an eye opener for most people," Shurtleff said in a recent release. "As technology changes, we need to do everything we can to educate the public about the dangers of identity theft and how they can stay ahead of the curve."
The AG's Web site, www.idtheft.utah.gov, details the low- and high-tech ways a thief could nab your name.
Rummaging through household trash or corporate trash bins can yield key information of unwitting victims -- but systematic shredding can foil those finds.
However, it's easy to amass a backlog of important papers -- pay stubs, bank statements, insurance documents, credit card offers and more.
This week and next, the AG's office invites Utahns to bring up to eight boxes each to any of its five scheduled identity-theft presentations and have Columbus Secure Shredding devour their documents for free.
"This is a great opportunity for people to clean out their cabinets," Morrill said. "And it relieves them of the pressure to have to do it at home."
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