3GS has purchased their second company in the Atlanta Area. This time it was Secure-Shred. The previous purchase was for Southeast Document Services. Financial terms of the deal were not released.

Many companies choose to shred in-house. This decision requires them to ignore the economic reality and the security risks. But how can they ignore the problems of disposing of the shredded paper? Easy for one Texas bank, just sell your shredded material to a local online merchant.

The first problem is that they don't use a good enough shredder to truly destroy the information. However, any shredding service will tell you that the shreds should also be handled with care. For most that means pulping the shreds. The side benefit is the paper is now recycled into new paper.

There is no stop to my amazement about who is still not handling their expired records correctly. SNB Bank was throwing old checks into the trash. And this is not a story where someone finds them and calls the police and local news.

These checks were found by David R. Osborne who used them to pass bad checks. He was caught by an alert KFC clerk who saw a check come in for a second time . Osborne was arrested and confessed to getting the checks out of the banks dumpster.

This is a reminder that for every company that gets caught for sensitive information in their dumpster there are bad guys making the same discoveries.

Personal information continues to be thrown away and the local news continues to cover it. Here is video of a dumpster full of personal information in Atlants. A personal injury lawyer is responsible for dumping the documents. His excuse was that the files were closed so he just dumped them. It will be sweet justice if a lawyer who I am sure claims to help the "little guy" get what he deserves from big companies is sued for treating the "little guy" so poorly.

If you were wondering how the records were found, George Altman found the documents bulging out of three dumpsters while walking past them in the Northlake office park.

Apparently a business putting documents in the trash is a good story for local media because it sure gets plenty of attention. Here is a story from Weslaco, Texas about a company putting personal information in the trash [see the video] . And how much information does it take? In this case only 1oo names.

If you are a business owner you need to be extremely vigilant with the information your customers have entrusted to you. Just a few pieces of paper in the trash can land you on the evening news in an unfavorable light. I think the easiest way to do this is to make shredding easy and convenient for everyone in the office. There is now easier way than several locked bins around the office where the paper can be stored. You will also need a person with the assigned job of shredding and a manager to watch and document the process. If you don't have two employees with too much time on their hands you should investigate a paper shredding service.

Jerri Lynne is moving and needed some cardboard boxes. To recycle, and save some money, she checked some local recycling dumpsters. What she found was the personal information for customers of a TV and electronics repair shop. The owner's excuse was that the dumpster was supposed to be locked. But he still doesn't say how he planned to protect his customers after the dumpster was taken to an un-secure recycling plant to be sorted.

It might be time for Richard Potts, owner of the store, to do some paper shredding. And if he uses a shredding service it is still recycled.

Here is the video.