What Kind of Documents Should Be Shredded?

Knowing what documents should be shredded is an important part of protecting yourself, your customers, your employees, and your business from identity theft, fraud, and unauthorized access to sensitive information.

A good rule of thumb is simple:

If a document contains Personally Identifiable Information (PII), financial information, confidential business information, or anything you would not want someone else to see, it should be securely shredded when it is no longer needed.

This applies to both individuals and businesses.

What Personal Documents Should Be Shredded?

Many everyday documents contain more sensitive information than people realize.

Personal documents that should generally be shredded before disposal include:

• Tax returns and supporting tax documents

• Bank statements

• Credit card statements

• Investment and brokerage statements

• Pay stubs

• Utility bills

• Medical records

• Health insurance documents

• Prescription records

• Expired identification cards

• Copies of driver’s licenses

• Copies of passports

• Social Security documents

• Employment records

• Loan documents

• Mortgage documents

• Insurance paperwork

• Retirement account statements

• Old checks

• Deposit slips

• Credit applications

• Pre-approved credit offers

• Documents containing signatures

• Documents containing account numbers

• Documents containing Social Security numbers

• Documents containing dates of birth

• Documents containing passwords or login information

• Documents containing addresses, phone numbers, or other personal information

Even something as simple as an old utility bill may contain your full name, address, account number, and other information that could potentially be misused.

What Is Personally Identifiable Information?

Personally Identifiable Information, commonly called PII, is information that can identify an individual either on its own or when combined with other information.

Examples of PII include:

• Full names

• Home addresses

• Social Security numbers

• Driver’s license numbers

• Passport numbers

• Dates of birth

• Phone numbers

• Email addresses

• Bank account numbers

• Credit card numbers

• Employee identification numbers

• Medical information

• Insurance information

• Signatures

Documents containing PII should never simply be thrown into an ordinary trash can or recycling bin when they are no longer needed.

Secure document shredding helps prevent sensitive information from being recovered after disposal.

What Business Documents Should Be Shredded?

Businesses often generate large amounts of confidential paperwork containing customer, employee, financial, legal, and operational information.

Business documents that should be securely shredded may include:

• Customer records

• Employee personnel files

• Payroll records

• Employment applications

• Background check documents

• Copies of identification

• Customer account information

• Financial statements

• Accounts payable records

• Accounts receivable records

• Bank records

• Credit card information

• Tax documents

• Medical and benefits information

• Insurance records

• Legal documents

• Contracts

• Confidential correspondence

• Pricing information

• Internal reports

• Proprietary business information

• Vendor records

• Purchase orders

• Invoices

• Sales reports

• Marketing plans

• Business strategies

• Intellectual property documents

• Draft documents

• Printed emails

• Meeting notes

• Customer lists

If a document contains information about your company, employees, customers, vendors, or business operations that is not intended for public viewing, secure destruction is usually the safest disposal method.

Should Old Tax Documents Be Shredded?

Yes, once tax documents are no longer required to be retained.

Tax returns and related records often contain some of the most sensitive personal and financial information found in your files, including:

• Social Security numbers

• Employer identification numbers

• Income information

• Bank information

• Investment information

• Addresses

• Dependent information

• Signatures

Before shredding tax documents, make sure you have satisfied any applicable IRS, accounting, legal, or business record-retention requirements.

Once the required retention period has passed, secure tax document shredding is far safer than placing the records in the trash or recycling.

Should Bank Statements and Financial Records Be Shredded?

Yes.

Old bank statements, credit card statements, loan records, investment statements, and other financial paperwork can contain information that may be useful to identity thieves or fraudsters.

These documents should be securely shredded once they are no longer needed.

This also applies to:

• Voided checks

• Canceled checks

• Deposit slips

• Credit applications

• Loan applications

• Financing documents

• Account-opening paperwork

• Investment statements

• Retirement account records

Should Medical Records Be Shredded?

Yes.

Medical documents can contain highly sensitive personal information, including:

• Patient names

• Addresses

• Dates of birth

• Medical conditions

• Prescription information

• Insurance numbers

• Account numbers

• Social Security numbers

• Treatment information

Businesses and healthcare organizations may also be subject to specific privacy and record-retention requirements.

Once medical records are eligible for disposal, they should be destroyed using an appropriate secure medical record shredding process.

Should Utility Bills Be Shredded?

Yes, particularly if they include your name, address, account number, payment information, or other identifying information.

Old electric bills, water bills, cable bills, internet bills, phone bills, and similar documents can reveal more information than many people realize.

When in doubt, shredding is generally safer than placing these documents intact into a recycling bin.

Should Junk Mail Be Shredded?

Some junk mail should be.

You do not necessarily need to shred every advertisement or restaurant flyer that arrives in your mailbox.

However, you should consider shredding junk mail containing:

• Your full name and address

• Pre-approved credit offers

• Insurance offers containing personal information

• Account numbers

• Barcodes connected to customer accounts

• Membership numbers

• Financial information

A simple approach is to look at the document before throwing it away.

If it contains personal information, shred it.

What Documents Do Not Usually Need to Be Shredded?

Documents containing no confidential or personally identifiable information can generally be recycled normally.

Examples might include:

• Blank envelopes

• Generic advertisements

• Product brochures

• Newspapers

• Magazines

• Publicly available flyers

• General catalogs

However, always check the document first for names, addresses, account numbers, labels, or other identifying information.

Should Businesses Shred Everything?

Many businesses adopt a Shred-All Policy rather than requiring employees to decide whether each individual document is confidential.

Under a Shred-All Policy, paper documents that are no longer needed are placed into secure locked shredding containers rather than ordinary trash or recycling bins.

This can help reduce the chance that employees accidentally discard confidential information without realizing it.

A consistent document-destruction policy can also make employee training easier and simplify a company’s information-security procedures.

Why Is Throwing Documents in the Trash Risky?

Once documents are placed into an ordinary trash or recycling container, organizations may lose control over who can access them.

Documents may be handled by employees, cleaning companies, waste haulers, recycling companies, or other third parties before they are ultimately destroyed.

Secure shredding reduces that exposure by physically destroying the documents before the information leaves the customer’s control.

Residential Document Shredding

Individuals accumulate sensitive paperwork too.

Common household documents that should be shredded include:

• Old tax records

• Bank statements

• Medical bills

• Credit card statements

• Pay stubs

• Insurance documents

• Utility bills

• Loan records

• Expired IDs

• Old checks

• Documents containing Social Security numbers

• Documents containing signatures

If you are cleaning out a home office, filing cabinet, garage, storage unit, or a family member’s estate, professional residential shredding services can securely destroy large quantities of old paperwork at once.

Commercial Document Shredding

Businesses may need either regularly scheduled shredding service or a one-time purge.

Scheduled shredding services are useful for businesses that continuously generate confidential documents.

One-time shredding or purge shredding is often ideal for:

• Office cleanouts

• File-room cleanouts

• Records-retention purges

• Moving offices

• Closing a business

• Year-end file disposal

• Warehouse cleanouts

• Large document backlogs

Professional document destruction can help businesses establish a more secure and consistent process for handling confidential records.

Secure Document Shredding in South Florida

MicroShred provides secure document shredding services throughout South Florida, serving businesses, government agencies, professionals, and individuals across Miami-Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach County.

Whether you need to destroy a few boxes of personal records or thousands of pounds of confidential business documents, MicroShred offers both on-site mobile shredding and off-site document destruction services.

Customers can securely destroy documents containing:

• Personally Identifiable Information

• Financial records

• Employee information

• Customer records

• Medical information

• Tax documents

• Legal records

• Corporate information

• Confidential business records

After service, customers receive a Certificate of Destruction documenting that their materials were securely destroyed.