Home

Off site shredding companies may have secure state of the art buildings with multi cross shredders for extra protection, but the machines are only beneficial if the documents make it to the destruction site.  The only way to ensure the destruction of your documents is if shredding occurs prior to the materials leaving the premises. 

Several variables need to be accounted for when transferring documents between locations.  Each variable increases the risk of documents being exposed to the wrong people.  Examples of such variables include:  dependability of the destruction company’s truck drivers, durability of the container being transferred, a locked or unlocked container, proper use of the truck’s doors and locks. 

Due to a broken latch on the back door of a truck, financial information, including checks went flying all over the Bangerter highway.  Local authorities did their best to gather all the documents, but there are no guarantees.   This incident creates a lot of extra work for the bank, having to contact everyone who may have had something in that bin; but worse than that, the increased possibility of identity theft leaves panic and insecurity in their customers, which may cause loss of business.

Check out this video:  Off Site Paper Shredding Disaster

Faulty locks aren’t the only cause for identity theft hazards.  There is no probable way for you to be sure the documents are being disposed of properly.  Many of the off site shredding companies also store documents.  There is the potential that your box of documents that was meant to be destroyed gets put on a shelf with another company’s stored documents and shipped off to them when they request the return of their materials.

When contracting with an off site shredding company you are gambling with your, and or your company’s, most confidential materials.  It is not viable for you to be sure all your documents make it to the shredder.  Some of the materials may end up in the garbage bin prior to destruction.  Just one piece of paper, containing the right information, landing in the wrong hands results in identity theft.  Do you want to leave that much responsibility on the employees of a company that isn’t yours?

On site shredding companies eliminate these risk factors.  One may try to argue the dependability of the destruction company’s driver could still play into effect.  Go Green Mobile Shredding has done away with this risk, by hiring credible individuals with clean backgrounds, and allowing the customer to watch their files be destroyed, if they choose.

Since February, the OC Register has printed multiple articles on a Corona Del Mar mortgage firm, Seaview Financial, which dumped an estimated 350 clients files into recycling bins at an elementary school.  The files containing personal information including social security numbers, bank transactions, credit reports and other information were thought to have been sitting in the open for three days.  This puts Seaview Financial’s clients at a high risk for identity theft. 

Owner, , claims he hired a company to burn the paperwork and is not liable for what that company did with it.  The articles outline that, Reed would not present a receipt or give the name of the company he worked with. 

In the spirit of good faith and American patriotism, let us assume Reed is innocent until proven guilty, and trust that he contracted with a paper destruction company.  His liability falls on researching the company and knowing where his clients’ personal information goes when it leaves his office.  Reed is liable for his customers documents and is learning his lesson the hard way; his mortgage license may be in jeopardy of being suspended or revoked.  Reed may also have to pay for each of the clients to have identity theft protection for several years.

If you don’t know what happens to your documents when they leave your office, now is the time to find out.  If your current paper destruction company cannot show you what happens to your company’s confidential documents and clients’ personal information, find a new destruction company. 

For those in the greater Los Angeles and Orange County area, contact Go Green Mobile Shredding.  Go Green lets you watch your documents be destroyed, if you choose, and presents you with a Certificate of Destruction upon completion.  Go Green then goes that extra step to do their part in protecting our environment by delivering the destroyed documents to a certified recycling facility, in their top of the line emission controlled diesel engine trucks. 

If you are outside the area, be sure to contract with a company that is a licensed and bonded paper destruction company that follows strict legislative mandates such as HIPPA and FACTA. 

Don’t put your clients, company, or yourself at risk.

Links to a couple actual articles:  “Board seeks to revoke license after broker dumped client files”

“Private medical records found in trash“

It is out of utter laziness that I throw my own junk mail in the trash prior to destruction. I, like many of you, am not void of the “it won’t happen to me” mentality. This is why I challenge you to dig through your own trash and see how many documents you tossed that violate the rules of shredding!

Identity theft is and has been the number one growing crime in America for several years. Government programs, companies and personal shredders are all there to help protect us from identity theft, but we have to start to help ourselves in order for them to be effective.

When you get to work, if you aren’t there already, go through the trash bin in your copy room/center. Count the number of documents that contain customer information, including customer names and or contact information, contract information, or marketing and sales information. If you count one, that is too many and your company is at risk. You and your company are responsible for keeping that information confidential and out of harms way. Personal and private information should be kept that way. You and your company should be more careful with others information than you are with your own. You want that from the companies you give your information to.

These common, but detrimental, slip ups are easily resolved by replacing garbage cans with shredding bins for all paper products and leaving garbage cans only in the kitchens and restrooms.

It is easy, cost effective and efficient for a company to shred everything, rather than let someone else’s personal information revealed because an employee didn’t realize the repercussions of throwing away that piece of paper prior to destruction.

As for you at home, it’s your identity and therefore your choice, but taking a couple extra seconds to properly destroy your junk mail is well worth avoiding the possible destruction of your identity.

If you are in the greater Los Angeles and Orange County areas, please contact Go Green Mobile Shredding for a personalized quote for all your shredding needs. Go Green is a certified shredding company that also gives back to the environment by recycling all the destroyed materials.

Comments on a recent article we stumbled across: The Clutter Diet Blog: The Rules About Paper

Anyone who has used a shredder more than once has experienced the frustration of the shredder jamming, beeping and taking up more time than necessary. In fact, the number one complaint about personal shredders is they jam too easily. Fellowes has come to our rescue by creating a new line of shredders that is 100% jam proof to rid us of the dreaded shredder issues, or so it seems.

On the Fellowes website there is a video demo of an office employee determined to jam the Fellowes 100% jam proof shredder. During that demo he shreds a paperclip without jamming the machine. You may also find under product details on websites that sell the shredders, paperclips can be run through the machine without a hiccup. That is a bit misleading. In the manual for the Fellowes shredders, under the section of, what the shredder cannot shred is large paperclips. As it turns out, this shredder is 100% jam proof as long as you do not shred anything that will jam the machine. Other items on that list include adhesive labels, transparencies, newspaper, cardboard, laminates, file folders, X-rays or plastic other than CDs, DVDs, and credit cards.

For those who have $400 to spend on their home office shredder, the Fellowes 100% jam proof shredder is a great option. But, if a company is looking for a more efficient and cost saving alternative to their current office shredders, hiring a certified mobile shredding service to do the work for them is a much better option.

Companies and residents in the greater Los Angeles or Orange County area, contact Go Green Mobile Shredding for a personalized quote. Not only will your company be better protected, but you will be giving back to the environment. Once the destruction of materials is properly completed, Go Green delivers the recyclable materials to a local recycling plant. Those outside the area contact National Association of Information Destruction (NAID) for another certified mobile shredding company in your area.

When asked the question, what types of documents should be shred, the most obvious documents come to mind. Examples of such documents are, anything with a social security number, banking information and medical files. Privacy is not limited to personal medical records and bank accounts.

Items that aren’t as obvious include, phone logs and messages, visitor logs, drafts of letters, mis-aligned forms and mis-printed copies. The act of discarding such documents prior to destruction conditionally violates several policies set in place for personal protection, including but not limited to HIPPA, Trade Secret Protections, Privacy Act and FACTA. .

Direct violations of the same policies include but are not limited to, brainstorming notes, customer names, drafts of contracts and proposals, obsolete contracts and records, supplier information and training information.

Failing to shred document prior to disposal puts you and your company at risk of sharing private information with identity thieves and competing businesses. For personal protection and to maintain company confidentiality and privacy, nearly all documents in the workplace and any document containing a persons name on it should be shred.

Today’s world offers few secure disposals for the vast amounts of personal communications which contain information that if given a close enough reading can lead someone to your identity.  These items of identity can then  be used to the detriment of one’s finances, one’s background, or one’s ideas, thoughts, or plans.   It is no longer clearly personal documents but also standard trash that can betray your personal choices.  Gone are the days when only a few people might be interested in knowing more about total strangers’ lives and businesses.   Today my junk mail may be as important a sign of who I am and what I am connected to as bank statements and bill payment notices.   The concept of on-site, secure, mobile shredding has been a reality for businesses for some time and can now be a great benefit to the residential sector  in protecting their identity.  On-site mobile shredding is needed for the individual homeowner as we can no longer trust that our trash doesn’t come back to cause us infinite problems caused by identify theft.

That being said, there are a couple of articles which we found interesting and full of Identity Theft information.  “Keep Information Safe With Paper Shredding Services” and “Financial Records:  Be Careful Where You Toss Them“, these are great articles discussing everything from personal shredding machines to using Professional Document Destruction Services.  Please check them out and let us know what you think.

Go Green Mobile Shredding is concerned with Identity Theft continuing to rise throughout the United States and Orange County.  We recently came across an article titled “The Value of Document Shredding“.  It discusses how important it is to protect yourself against Identity theft.  We couldn’t agree more with this article and wanted to share it with you.

Go Green Mobile Shredding is proud to be servicing Orange County areas. “We are very excited to be opening our doors to the Orange County Community. Our focus is providing the best customer service in the industry, focusing on saving the environment, increasing Identity Theft Education and did I mention the Environment. Customer service in this industry has seemed to have been put on the back burner and we want to bring it back”, stated Darrin Gardner, President of Go Green Mobile Shredding.

We have been able to pick up many accounts as National and Local competitors drop the ball on service. A majority of the complaints we receive from our new customers are, “XYZ Company was supposed to be here two weeks ago and our bins are over flowing” or “I called our current shredding company and they said they were too busy and they could pick up my paper in 2 weeks.” Its customer service mistakes like this that will make our job so much easier. Our goal is to service every account called in (whether on our service or a purge job) within 24 hours of the call.

Due to the increasing numbers of Identity theft, companies like Go Green Mobile Shredding are becoming more important than ever. Companies and individuals need to protect themselves from Identify theft. Using an onsite secure document destruction company can be your first step to saving the environment and having peace of mind. Our mobile shredding trucks have internal cameras so our clients can actually see their documents being destroyed. We also provide our clients with an Official Document of Destruction upon completion of the service.

As one of the newest shredding services available in Orange County, Go Green Mobile Shredding will be happy to take your call and assist you with your shredding needs.