In today’s world where identity is one of the rising concerns of many, there are various precautions one can take to prevent the menace of identity theft. In the first world countries, identity theft is a growing concern. Each year credit card, bank details get stolen and both the individual and the government incur heavy pecuniary damages from it. This is why everyone should be extra careful in particular places not to risk identity theft.

There are mainly two ways identity theft can happen:

• Stealing credentials online
• Stealing hard copies of documents

While online theft can be prevented with using good antivirus software and a few precautionary measures when going online, preventing hard copy stealing requires something else — this is where shredding services come in.

Why shredding services?

Most of the credentials that are used to make fake identities are stolen from the garbage bins the old fashioned way. Most of times families discard expired credit and debit cards and bank slips, medical records etc and put them in the garbage bin get disposed of later. Scavengers find these records with thorough searches in the dustbins and use these records to steal identities and use stolen identities in dishonest purposes.

Hiring shredding services Houston can help you in diminishing all your records that you do not need anymore.

Documents that can make you vulnerable to identity theft

In Texas alone, each year 20,000 families fall prey to identity theft and incur damage to themselves and the state. It happens mostly because people do not know how to protect themselves. Lack of understanding how identity theft is carried out makes people more vulnerable than anything else. There are certain documents that should be destroyed if you do not want risk identity theft. You might underestimate the amount of damage a simple medical record can do to you, but an experienced shredding services company will definitely not. There are a few other records that you might underestimate, but identity thieves will not. Here is a list of documents that can make you vulnerable to an attack:

• Bank slips
• Discarded letters with names and addresses
• Medical records
• Discarded id cards
• Discarded credit or debit cards
• All medical records
• Insurance information
• Invoices of items
• Loan information

The list might be long enough to raise your eyebrow high enough, but this is a small list of things thieves can retrieve information that will harm you.