Paper Shredders for Home or Office

Paper Shredders - Identity Theft, Security and Safety

In this day and age of identity theft paper shredders are an essential part of any office and equally of any home. A paper shredder is define as a mechanical device which cuts cut paper into "chad", strips or fine particles. Privacy experts recommend that you shred bills, credit card statements, tax documents, and bank statements, and any other items thieves may use to commit fraud or steal your identity.

You absolutely must destroy any documents containing personal information before putting them out in the trash. For two reasons, firstly there are people who are willing to pick up trash and sift through it to get bank details, credit card details, tax information etc... and, if you are famous, any juicy stories about your private life.

Secondly, if the trash is collected by your municipal trash service then where does it go ? To recycling ? Maybe, or maybe not. TV documentaries have been done about waste being dumped - not shredded - in a boat, shipped across the world to Africa and then being re-dumped unshredded in a waste pile in countries like Nigeria.

How would you feel about having your bank or credit card details on a landfill site in Nigeria? So, despite what your government may tell you about how they are meeting their paper shredding or recycling targets - a lot of stuff is just shipped off and dumped somewhere the voters can't see it.

It is essential therefore for the purposes of identity theft protection that you destroy any documents before putting them out in the trash. Burning might be a good idea but if you have large amounts of paper then some states have laws against burning it. And for an office, burning large amounts of paper everyday is not a viable option. So paper shredding is the best alternative, which is good news for the manufacturers of paper shredders of course. But buying a paper shredder is not very expensive and only common sense really. You can get a decent heavy-duty shredder (that also shreds CDs and paper clips etc...) for around $200 e.g. the Fellowes Intellishred PS-79Ci. You can get cheaper shredders for around $40, these are for light-duty only and will jam if you feed in more than one page at a time.

What types of paper shreddders are available ?

Which is the best type of paper shredder ? Well. there are paper shredders that will cut your paper into strips, then there are cross cut paper shredders, industrial paper shredders, heavy duty paper shredders, paper shredders for home use or shredders for office use, confetti shredders, high-security shredders, there are even some manual shredders, but in this day and age electricity is generally not a problem. The best paper shredder for you will depend on what your requirements are.

Paper Shredder Safety Concerns

One thing to bear in mind before deciding which paper shredder to buy is the safety concern, i.e. fingers. Yes, this can be a problem. A number of people every year have accidents with fingers in paper shredders, particularly young children, so don't assume a shredder is just another machine like a photocopier. A shredder has dangerous moving parts and fingers have been know to be lost in them.

As a result of these concerns paper shredder manufacturers such as Fellows and Intimus have come up with special safety features such as sensors that switch the machine off if they detect fingers too close to the paper entry, slimmer paper entries, safety locks to prevent children switching the shredder on, safety flaps that cover the cutters when the shredder head is taken out of the waste backet, safety interlock switches that make sure the shredder head can not be activated if it is out of the waste basket. It is also a good idea to leave the shredder unplugged when it is not being used, especially if there are children or pets nearby.

Document Shredder Security Concerns

The basic idea of a paper shredder is, of course, to cut your documents up into such small pieces that nobody can read them. Unfortunately if someone is really desperate to put the pieces back together again they can. In the US Embassy in Iran documents were shredded just before the Embassy was overrun. But the Iranians decided to put all the documents back together again, and they succeeded. The same is happening in Germany where the documents of the East German secret Police, the Stasi, were shredded but the current government is working on putting them all back together. There are even computer programs now that will scan all the tiny fragments created by a paper shredder and piece them back together. This is very expensive to do of course and is only of concern for governments or very large organizations with extremely sensitive information to shred.

Nevertheless, as a result of this, standards have been devised with regard to paper shredders and document shredders to say how effective they are at shredding. These standards refer to different levels of shredding :-

Level 1 = 12 mm strips
Level 2 = 6 mm strips
Level 3 (confidential) = 2 mm strips
Level 4 (Commercially Sensitive) = 2 x 15 mm particles (strips cut into lengths of 15mm)
Level 5 (Top Secret or Classified) = 0.8 x 12 mm particles
Level 6 (also Top Secret or Classified) = 0.8 x 4 mm particles

So, what do you need to look for in a paper shredder ?

• You are better off getting a cross-cut paper shredder, which cuts paper into smaller bits, and is therefore far more secure than a strip-cut paper shredder.
• Get a shredder that is more than what you think you need.  Paper shredders come with a capacity rating, but as ever, these ratings tend to be on the optimistic side. If it says it can handle eight sheets of paper then you may like to divide that figure by 2 at least. Paper shredders that also shred CDs, DVDs and credit cards may be worth considering.
• Is tour shredder easy-to-empty? Expensive shredders have drawers or bins that make them easier to empty. If you don't need this feature, however, then you may be able to save yourself some money.
• Almost all shredders feature auto-stop/start and reverse modes. With auto-start the shredder switches on automatically when you insert a sheet of paper. Reverse mode is used to clear paper jams.
• As mentioned above, think about safety. If you have kids or pets in the house, choose a shredder with the best safety features.

Those are the basics about shredders, check back later for more details about specific types of paper and document shredders.

Home : Crosscut Paper Shredders
Related Posts : How to Choose a cross cut shredder and  heavy duty paper shredders