Dumpster Diving

What's in your garbage can be used against you!

Dumpster diving, going through your garbage, is used by criminals and maybe your business competitors to gather information that you'd rather they don't have. Dumpster diving is also used by attorneys, watchdog organizations, and others.

For example, discarded credit card bills, bank statements, utility statements, credit card offers and similar documents are used by identity thieves. They are used to gather information to get credit cards in your name and rack up bills, open bank accounts in your name to launder money and other illegal activities, and even possibly get a passport or drivers license in your name.

Your credit can be destroyed and worse. What if someone got identification under your name and then committed crimes, for example acts of terrorism or fraud? Could you be blamed? It could certainly make life very unpleasant for you.

Businesses also discard lots of information that can be of use to their competitors. Product plans, marketing plans, financial information and more can have devastating effects in the hands of competitors.

It's also possible that information recovered could be used to blackmail people and businesses. Not just records of potentially illegal activities, but something like love letters to your mistress. Extortion is big business unfortunately.

Any private, confidential, or otherwise sensitive documents should be shredded before they are disposed of. Having one or more handy paper shredders make this easy and helps insure it happens.

Some shredders can also handle CDs and other computer media. Certainly be careful of disposing of used computers - information can often be retrieved from their hard drives even if it's been erased.

Sometimes dumpster divers are not out to create crimes, mischief, or spy on others. Dumpster diving can simply be a form of "aggressive recycling" - lots of good stuff gets thrown away.

The term "information diving" is sometimes used to indicate looking through discarded materials for private, confidential, or otherwise sensitive information, to help distinguish it from "aggressive recycling" dumpster diving. "Information diving" is not a widely used term as of this writing.