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Said OP is 52 so escaped Blair's education system by some margin and it was an engineering apprenticeship rather that A Levels and Degrees, luckily said apprenticeship was in Telecommunications and having worked in that same sector for the last 36 years he know's a little bit about the internet 🙂 Unluckily for some presently designing and delivering some of the Telecoms and internet services you rely on today.
Compostable wrappers for the win! Great call. Mark, Chipps what’s the additional cost of this? We’re doing it with one use coffee cups at our club.
There’s a material that’s been available for decades, and it’s biodegradable. It’s called Cellophane...
I still think the easiest way is to use one of those mammoth Sharpies, the ink will often dissolve the printer ink used on the bag, so it’s impossible to read anything underneath, it takes seconds, and the bag can be binned straight away. It’s what I do to any packaging labels I can’t peel off, which I try to do with Jiffybags, so I can reuse them.
Can sympathise with the OP. MrsT has a seriously high security clearance for her work(soon to be retired). We slash & Burn rather than shred & bin…..
IME people who like to make claims they have a high security clearance, don’t.
There’s a material that’s been available for decades, and it’s biodegradable. It’s called Cellophane…
But not compostable unlike cellulose which has the advantage of not requiring a highly toxic process to manufacture.
Can sympathise with the OP. MrsT has a seriously high security clearance for her work(soon to be retired). We slash & Burn rather than shred & bin…..
But gets post sent to your home address with her name on? Either your perception of the threat is exaggerated or your security is inadequate.
Completely OTT and if anything just gives you some false sense of security. Your address is public knowledge and easily discoverable by a number of means. If anyone was specifically targetting you and wanted to go through your rubbish they'd already know when you live rather than just looking through the landfill for bags with stuff with your details in it.
That said just melt it it if you really need to, takes a second with a lighter
It’s not about stealing just your address, though, is it? It’s about being able to build a profile of a person in a few seconds.
Address : check
Shopping : Tesco
Workplace : St Elsewhere hospital
Journal : Physiotherapy (they’re a physiotherapist)
One of those things from the bank saying they’ve changed their T&Cs (now we know which bank they use)
Hobbies: etc etc
Packing slip for the recent stuff you bought online - maybe there’s an email address at the bottom of the address line.
It’s not unreasonable to be conscious about the data you’re giving away via your recycling bin.
Whilst aggregation of information is an important principal to be aware of when dealing with security classification etc. I don't really see how hobbies etc. are of much relevance. Sure they could be used to help refine a spear-phising attack or something but that seems highly unlikely here. Shredding anything from a bank (and not just correspondence with financial info in it) is worth doing but that's not what's being talked about here, it's magazine covers...
It’s not about stealing just your address, though, is it?
It's exactly what it is, they're sticky labels with an address on not banking details.
I don't care about the whys and wherefores, but isn't the answer in the OP -
anything we consider sensitive it gets shredded
??
I cut the address and personal detail bits off most letters and packages before it goes into recycling. Yeah it's paranoid, but not hard to build up an image of what banks, credit cards I'm using and more importantly things I'm buying and tag the address as of interest to burgle. Basically more the opportunist who's sorting junk at the recycling, spots something of interest and an address on it.
Though there's still the postie worker or delivery guy who has access to the information before delivery.
What magazines I'm subscribing to, yeah, not so fussed. But then I don't subscribe to physical magazines any more anyway. Only things are a few magazines that come as part of some other subscription (National Trust for example).
The wrappers at the moment just go in the bin, though I would like the ability to easily recycle plastic wrapping, not just magazines but also stuff from the supermarket. Easily as in at the kerb, not a trek to a recycling centre. Or better stop with the plastic.
Basically more the opportunist who’s sorting junk at the recycling, spots something of interest and an address on it.
That is a lot of effort to get in there for a nice TV...
For the OP if you have concearns like that then the question should be asked of the security dep at work. Or the obvious get the mags sent to work.
Other option include putting the wrappers in the secure disposal at work.
It’s not unreasonable to be conscious about the data you’re giving away via your recycling bin.
I avoid putting anything with our address on in the recycling bin just in case their is stuff in there that breaks the rules.....
May be a surprise but some people in so called public service jobs do get quite nasty threats from random nutters...keeping your home address off radar as much as possible goes with the territory
It’s not unreasonable to be conscious about the data you’re giving away via your recycling bin.
Yet most people happily give Facebook and Google far more without even considering it.
The effort to physically get data about someone means that they must already have been targeted as 'of interest' before their bins are gone through. If you're being investigated for specific known reasons then fair enough to be paranoid but if a piece of paper with your address on it is part of a 50 tonne recycling batch then it's just not worth anyone's while to pick it out.
If you’re that secret squirrel, take them into work, put them in a confi waste sack. Or speak to your operational security advisor, I’m sure they could do with a good laugh.
"On the electoral roll, pretty sure if you’ve ticked the ‘unpublished’ box your name doesn’t appear."
No.
Bloody hell, I’m pretty sure the op didn’t ask for 2 pages of critiquing his reasoning for wanting to redact his personal information from the bin...
Plenty of reasons for doing this. I do it myself especially when I have work details on the packaging.
OP can’t you shred all the cellophane packets into a seperate bag once a month day and then just dispose of those? Shredder should cope with it well enough.
I’m pretty sure the op didn’t ask for 2 pages of critiquing his reasoning ..
He's a newby then? 😉
I do it myself especially when I have work details on the packaging.
Becuase technically that's commercial waste and you're not allowed to dispose of it in your domestic bin, technically?
I do it myself especially when I have work details on the packaging.
‘Mega-Spies Inc’
No.
Whilst technically true ticking the box does make it harder to find the details.
As for shredding address stuff. I generally do so but that is mostly because I got a shredder for stuff that really is confidential (bank statements and the like) so might as well use it on the rest.
Bloody hell, I’m pretty sure the op didn’t ask for 2 pages of critiquing his reasoning for wanting to redact his personal information from the bin…
Well this is STW, what else do you expect? The OP's request was answered pretty quickly anyway, obfuscate with a permanent marker or melt/burn the address. So if he really needed to be told that then he got his answer without having to carry on reading to page 2. So the rest of us, likely being bored at work, choose to focus our efforts on undermining the legitimacy of the original requirement. All pretty standard stuff...
Struggling to see the security risk in having your address on envelopes in the bin at your address TBH. "Bloody hell, the people who live here live here!" I'm not sure as knowing you subscribe to Cosmo means that n'er-do-wells are going to break in and steal your telly or clone your credit card.
Recycling Good though, of course.