The US Federal Trade Commission defines identity theft as when personally identifying information is used without your permission to commit fraud or other crimes. Identity theft is a growing crime and if your identity is stolen the results can be horrific. Your personally identifying information includes social security numbers and other identity numbers, date of birth, credit card and brokerage account information and much more.

Unfortunately our personal identifying information is stored in many places, including in databases we have no control over. These databases may not be protected well and hacked into by outside criminals, or perhaps stored on a portable device and easily stolen like a laptop. The news has had too many horror stories of this kind recently.

Many documents also contain personal identifying information and we have control over many of these, including tax returns, credit card and brokerage statements, preapproved credit card offers, bills, checks and much more.

Unfortunately many people simply throw old documents like these in the trash when no longer needed.

Criminals and others do look through trash - it's called "dumpster diving." Imagine going through the garbage of a very upscale condominium for example. Most of the garbage will belong to financially well off people, and opening accounts in their names could be very lucrative to criminals and devastating to them.

All potentially private, confidential, and sensitive documents should to be destroyed before disposing of them to help prevent identity theft. Just imagine if your tax documents, credit account bills, bank statements, brokerage statements, and other sensitive documents got into the wrong hand!

Paper Shredders are a great way to destroy documents, turning them into basically useless undecipherable waste. I own multiple shredders, including in the office and at home.

Paper shredding is not foolproof though! For example the FBI and other law enforcement and spy agencies can reconstruct shredded documents fairly quickly, however for well over 99% of all private, confidential, and sensitive documents, a paper shredder is perfect.

Most households should have a paper shredder and use it frequently! Many shredders also shred CDs and DVDs with ease, and heavy-duty models easily handle staples and paperclips.

Not all paper shredders are the same. For example there are different types and many cheap models have issues with reliability.