What looks like a sack of trash to you can be a gold mine for an identity thief.Leaving credit card receipts or papers or CDs with personally identifying information in a dumpster facilitates fraud and exposes consumers to the risk of identity theft. By properly disposing of sensitive information, you ensure that it cannot be read or reconstructed.

• Implement information disposal practices that are reasonable and appropriate to prevent unauthorized access to-or use of-personally identifying information. Reasonable measures for your operation are based on the sensitivity of the information, the costs and benefits of different disposal methods, and changes in technology.
• Effectively dispose of paper records by shredding,burning, or pulverizing them before discarding.Make shredders available throughout the workplace,including next to the photocopier.
• When disposing of old computers and portable storage devices, use wipe utility programs. They're inexpensive and can provide better results by overwriting the entire hard drive so that the files are no longer recoverable. Deleting files using the keyboard or mouse commands usually isn't sufficient because the files may continue to exist on the computer’s hard drive and could be retrieved easily.
• Make sure employees who work from home follow the same procedures for disposing of sensitive documents and old computers and portable storage devices.
• If you use consumer credit reports for a business purpose, you may be subject to the FTC's Disposal Rule. For more information, see Disposing of Consumer Report Information? New Rule Tells How at www.ftc.gov (just enter the title into the search engine).