The blurb on the Hand Paper Shredder sales page does a nice job of walking you through some of the ways in which your identity can be stolen, and just how easy it is most of the time. Utility bills from your garbage can be used as an intermediary form of identification in order to obtain more commonly accepted ID. The credit-card forms you receive as offers and just throw away can be filled out by someone else and, with a bit more planning, they’ll have access to your credit.

Shred any document you don’t need, is the lesson here, because not being an identity thief – you don’t know the myriad ways they’ve come up with in order to grab a hold of yours. It’s not just an information game played online, and it never was, so unless you’re willing to spend the money on a shredder with real horsepower, the $24 hand-powered version from ThinkGeek will do the job nearly as well, and it comes with the advantage of portability.

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Features:

• 12-sheet capacity
• 6 min full run, 7 gallon bin, 8.9-inch throat size

Savings end 9/27

Features:

• Shred paper, cds, dvds and credit cards
• Final product in a diamond shapes preventing docs from being taped backed together

Buy it: Officemax Shredder With Diamond Cut – $60