You may not realize it, but there are some items being tossed in the trash that could be your personal information and secure data at risk. It’s easy to remember that documents containing private and personal information need to be professionally and certifiably shredded. What about seemingly worthless items such as ID Badges? Any type of personal information associated with you or your company needs to be shredded no matter how old the technology to keep all data safe and secure. Check out the top 5 things you should be shredding but probably aren’t.

1. Hard drives. So, you may know that you need to erase all data but did you know that even with a professional wipe there is still retrievable information on a hard drive? The right person with just a little knowledge can steal secure data from your old hard drives and cause some serious problems.
2. Flash drives and memory cards. They may seem small and insignificant but these tiny devices can actually store quite a bit of personal information. If you aren’t having them shredded a thief can easily access any private data that has been stored on them in the past.
3. Cell phones. There is a huge market for the resale of old cell phones. Unfortunately, the average person may not be doing much more than a factory reset before selling them. If you are like many consumers today lots of private information including credit cards and bank accounts are stored on your phones. It’s probably better to just have those devices shredded.
4. Cassettes and CD-Roms. We’re talking old school here but there are a lot of places that still have information stored on these devices about the clients or even students. To be sure this secure data is kept private send your old memory storage items to Shred With Us for disposal.