Dumpster Diving And Identity Theft

The last posting on ID Theft covered Social Engineering. This post continues with the theme of Identity Theft, focusing on rummaging through the trash for Private and Confidential Information . . .

Dumpster Diving

Dumpster Diving can be defined as ". . . . the practice of rummaging through trash, whether commercial or residential, to find items of use that have been discarded. It takes advantage of the fact that as a whole, people and businesses are very wasteful" (SOURCE: . http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dumpster_diving). When we envision the term Dumpster Diving, normally the image of homeless and poor people rummaging through garbage land fills comes into mind. However, today, this is not the case. Dumpster Diving is now becoming the method of choice for ID Theft. This is so because people and businesses simply throw out their confidential and private information, such as bank statements, credit card bills (as well as other types of bills), business information, customer data, etc. "Dumpster Divers" however just do not look for information on paper, they look for anything that has information, such as hard disk drives, magnetic tape media, etc.

Currently, to my knowledge, there is no law against Dumpster Diving. In fact, it is amazing just how much information there is on the Internet about Dumpster Diving. Using any search engine (best results come when using Google), simply type in "Dumpster Diving" and you will find a wealth of information.

How to Protect Yourself From Dumpster Diving

Confidential and Private Information Stored On Hard Copies

What is the best way to protect yourself or yourself from Dumpster Diving with regards to Hard Copies? Well, one solution would be to rotate on a daily basis the times in which you dump trash. But really, the best defense against Dumpster Diving is simply using a shredder, and shredding all of the documents that are destined for the Dumpster. However, as common sense as it may sound, you also need to consider the manner in which your documents will be shredded. There are two types of shred available: Cross Cut (also known as a Confetti Cut"), and Strip Cut. With a Strip Cut, the documents are cut into long strips. But, the key to point to remember with this type of shred is that if a Dumpster Diver had the patience and time, documents with a Strip Cut can be reconstructed.. Therefore, it is best to use a Cross Cut, as the documents are broken down into smaller bits, and cannot be reconstructed.

Confidential and Private Information Stored On Electronic Copies

Also, if you get rid of hard disk drives and other types of storage media, make sure that you reformat all devices, and all information and data is deleted from them. As an extra step of protection, also, render the storage devices physically useless, such as taking apart the hard drive, etc. This way, even if the Dumpster Diver does get access to a storage device, there is little they can do with it physically.

Final Thoughts On Today’s Posting

The next posting on Identity Theft will cover the more covert and electronic ways of stealing one’s Identity: Phishing. Remember all those phony E-Mails you get from people claiming they are from Africa and are looking for a place to deposit money in the US? Well, this is an example of Phishing. The attempt is to con you into giving away your Banking Account Information. However, this is just one form of Phishing, there are other types as well. These will all be covered in the next posting.