Satisfaction

Free shredding last Saturday

More than half of the companies (financial, telecommunications, medical) that I deal with have experienced data breaches. To allay customers' worries they always offer a year's free subscription to a security service that will monitor suspicious activity--for example, new credit cards taken out in customers' names--and provide insurance against ID theft losses.

I signed up for one or two of these protective services in the past but have stopped doing so. They always involve sharing with yet another company very detailed information, such as date of birth, social security number, bank account and brokerage account numbers, where one has lived for the past forty years, whether one owns or rents, etc. To me the risk of that new company being breached by a hacker or a crooked employee is greater than the benefit of that company's protection.

So I go back to the traditional method of checking credit card statements and reconciling (what's that kids? look it up) financial accounts monthly--stuff I had been doing for thirty years before the internet existed. Other than a few times my credit card number has been stolen to make some purchases for several hundred dollars, I have never had a problem with ID theft (knock on wood).

As for preventing leaks from paper sources, we bundle the documents that need to be destroyed--old tax returns are too voluminous for our home shredder--and take them to City Hall for Foster City's free-shredding Saturdays.

There was a grinding sound as the papers were lifted into the machine and pulverized. You can't get that satisfaction from cleaning a hard disk.