The Anti-Gym was recently shuttered by the IRS for a failure to pay payroll taxes but it looks like the former clients of the gym were the real losers. That is because detailed and personal information was left in the dumpster behind the gym. This included the standard fodder for an identity thief. It also had some very personal information that clients had shared with their trainers. The information was stored in client files. The owner said he was not responsible for the documents ending in the dumpster because he was locked out by the IRS but witnesses disagree. [full story]

I hope that bankruptcy courts allow businesses to spend a little on a shredding service to protect the personal information a business maintains.

Through an "unfortunate oversight" Southern Satellite decided to dump their customers information into the dumpster. This included names, addresses, social security numbers and even credit card numbers. The information was discovered and reported to Channel 9 and the police. Southern Satellite installs dishes in the area. Perhaps it is time to find a Florida shredding service

See the video.

The FTC has filed a complaint against First Interstate Mortgage Corporation ( FIM ) and Nevada One Corporation ( Nevada One ) for failure to shred. The companies owned by one group contracted with customers to maintain personal information under FACTA. However, 40 boxes of personal information covered under the contract and FACTA were later found in a dumpster. The case now moves to U.S. the District Court for Nevada.

It appears that you can add the FTC to the local media, and the Texas AG as people out to get companies who fail to protect their customers with document destruction programs.

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I am sure when you are in an ambulance the last thing you are worried about is your personal information. However, people who got a ride from Express EMS Services in Houston Texas are wondering about it today. A self proclaimed dumpster diver found all the personal information an identity thief would need. He notified KTRK who came out and took some great video of the dumpster.

Any company in Texas that risks throwing personal information in the trash when you know the AG is targeting the practice is not very bright. Stay tuned for the post about the fine they will be paying.

If you are in Houston and don't want to pay big fines to the state then stop by Shred Nations to start your shredding.

The Courier of Russellville, Arkansas has a story about another bonanza of personal information behind a closed business. It was so much information that it couldn't fit in a dumpster but was stacked on several pallets. The bundles contained years of Western Union transactions. It appears the information is from a closed store and left out by the building manager. Full article.

B&F Finance of McAllen, Texas decided to save some money on shredding and just dump their client files in the dumpster. The files were discovered by the Attorney Generals office and the result was a fine of $20,000. In tough economic times it doesn't make sense to save a couple of hundred on shredding only to pay a huge fine.

Juan Nino, a tax preparer in Brownsville, and Victory Management Services of Dallas Lake were also caught with personal information in their dumpster. They were expected to announce fines soon.

Businesses need to be aware that not only do they need to take care of their clients information but AGs around the country see this as a great source of revenue for their offices. This means that dumpster diving is only going to grow.

The Attorney General has made it his personal quest to stop Texas Businesses from throwing personal information into the trash and exposing Texans to identity theft. It might be time to make sure his fellow government agencies are also diligent.

A woman in Harlingen Texas was looking for empty boxes when she found personal documents left behind by the Texas Department of Health and Human Services. The papers contained name, addresses and social security numbers. See the video.

The must not be aware that there are many Texas shredding services.

Staci-Lyn Honda spent last week dumpster diving. Not surprisingly she found personal information that could be used to commit identity theft. What is surprising is that the people who had their information seem unfazed by the discovery. Even when someone proved they went the trash they held onto their opinion that no one would go through the trash. [video]

It might be a good time to find a Horseheads shredding service at Shred Nations.

A recent audit of county and state offices in Pinellas county have turned up numerous documents containing personal information. The documents were found in a dumpster used by several offices and it is unclear which office was responsible for the security breach. Full Story.

Might be time for a paper shredding service.

This is a new story about an old problem. A man was driving down the street and saw a file cabinet next to a dumpster. He stopped to take it home when he realized the dumpster was full of boxes of personal information. The information included names, number, addresses, SSNs and copies of drivers license. The boxes were traced back to a title company called Abstractors Title Company. [source]

When you choose a company to work with it is a good idea to make sure they have shredding bins from the local shredding service around their office.

A man took a check to U.S. Cellular in Des Moines to pay his bill. The check ended up in the trash, un-shredded, where it was discovered by Christopher Hunter Johnson. Johnson then altered the check and deposited it into his own account. The crime earned Johnson five years of probation. [source]

I don't want to forgive Johnson but why isn't U.S Cellular taking better care of its customers? They should be shredding all the paper work that comes through their offices.

If you have ever rented from the Hollywood Video in Liberty Missouri, you should keep a close eye on your credit. The store recently closed and all the personal information the store collected was simply tossed into the dumpster for the world to find. The problem was discovered by someone looking for boxes and reported to authorities but it is unclear who had access to them before the report was made.

It might be time for Hollywood Video to use a paper shredding service whenever they need to close a store. See the video.

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.

To step away from Texas for a post; boxes of personal documents have turned up in an apartment complex dumpster in Deerfield Township, Kentucky. Police are investigating the origin of the documents. I will let you know more as the story develops.

Authorities in DC have discovered a dumpster full of real estate transactions. The documents contained bank information, salary information and Social Security numbers. It is unknown who dumped the boxes but the company that owned them is no longer in business.

What is becoming obvious is that the mortgage crisis is driving many mortgage companies into bankruptcy. When this happens all their customer's personal information in the trash for the world to discover. Lets hope the mortgage crisis doesn't end up starting an identity theft crisis.

Beware if you ever applied to Parliament Pub in Omaha. They require you to put your social security number on their application and then just throw them in the trash. The applications were found and turned over to the local media. It is unknown how long the practice had been going on before they were discovered.

For the amount of paperwork that a pub has to shred they could use a service like Ship 'n' shred for a few bucks a month.

Texas Insurance Claims Services in Richardson is the latest business to make the news for what is in their dumpster. The company had boxes of customers' personal information sitting out for anyone to see. They story was reported to WFAA after a man was taking pictures of the dumpsters contents. The man claimed he was just looking for boxes but it is unclear why he was taking pictures.

The business owner said the files were five years old and he was no longer required to save them. We an Attorney General as active on this problem as they have in Texas this was a foolish gamble. The cost of the fines will easily exceed the cost of the paper shredding.

It seems like just the other day I was writing a post about a company that moved but left sensitive information behind. The business blamed the moving company for the error. Well who do you blame if a moving company moves and leaves sensitive customer information behind?

Wheeler's Moving Company recently moved from Boca Raton to Jupiter but left "Piles and piles of personal files with tax information, social security numbers and license numbers" behind in a dumpster.

The local media was notified but it is unclear who had access to the dumpster before they were discovered. The company has said that it will shred documents going forward.

As the Obama campaign left North Carolina for the next primary states the local media did some dumpster diving to see how well they take care of their supporters personal information. After digging through the trash they found a checks, names, addresses and telephone numbers. Apparently after you send in your check you are no longer important to the campaign and don't deserve protection.

And what about the Clinton campaign? Their trash was behind a fence but I doubt if a chain link fence would keep an identity thief out.

Maybe we could get two senators to look into why personal information is being carelessly handled.

The River Stream Fund has come under scrutiny from securities regulator in Massachusetts. The hedge fund is under investigation for several violations including a failure to check the net worth of their clients. In Massachusetts you must meet financial requirements to invest in risky hedge funds.

So where did the state get their evidence? The fund simply dumped their client records into their dumpster where they were uncovered by regulators.

It is this exact type of case, California v. Greenwood, that made dumpster diving protected.

Pedro Carrasquillo was visiting a Public Storage in Lake Buena Vista when he made an alarming discovery. He wanted to put some things in the dumpster but couldn't because it was overflowing with boxes of documents. Upon closer inspection he discovered that they were the personal records for members of the Amateur Athletic Union. The documents contained the birth certificates and social security numbers for hundreds of members.

Mr Carrasquilo notified channel 9 which prevented the documents from being used for a nefarious purpose. It is unclear how the boxes ended in the dumpster but a likely scenario is that they were purged from a local storage unit.

Just the latest case of someone mistaking a shredding bin with a dumpster.

Beware to anyone buying a shredder at Office Max. Apparently none of the models they sell actually shred paper. This became obvious after it was discovered that Office Max in Naples throws old job applications with social security numbers, addresses, and other personal information into a dumpster behind the store.

If you buy a shredder and hope people assign themselves the extra job of shredding you are a fool. Here was a store with hundreds of shredders sitting around, and not the small ones but the big ones that cost hundreds of dollars, and yet they couldn't be troubled with actually doing the job.

The only document destruction program that is effective is a shredding service that comes by regularly and provides the business with documentation that it was all shredded..

Steve Gillett was shocked at what he found behind the office of Visa Services Northwest. Not just personal information of the businesses clients but his own documents. He found papers including his name, social security number, credit card information and even a copy of his signature.

If I was to read into this story I would say Steve was mad with the company and was looking through the trash in an effort to harm the company. And his efforts paid off when he found information the law requires a business to shred. He then called the local media and the Attorney General.

The companies owner, Xiaoli Ding said this was an isolated incident and the company shreds personal information and shreds the rest. They have since moved to shredding everything.

Kudos to Visa Services Northwest for introducing a much better document destruction program. This highlights the dangers of a poorly designed program. Your enemies are always looking for you to make a mistake with what you shred. And do you really want your lowest level employees making the decision about what should be shredded? For the low cost of a paper shredding service the approach of shred everything is the only prudent option.

Channel 2 in Fort Myers recently took a look into a dumpster behind Dr. James Barringer's office. What they found were his patient files with full name, address and social security numbers. When Dr. Barringer was contacted he came out to the dumpster and dug out his patient files and said it was a mistake and the person responsible would be fired. Clearly Dr. Barringer understood that he was in violation of HIPAA. However, he didn't take the reasonable precaution of hiring a shredding service but instead used the "head in sand" approach.

The story doesn't end there. Channel 2 then found the files from the office of Lucille Adgate, a Certified Public Accountant. They were tax records that contained her clients personal information. She was notified and then came out to dig out her files. Apparently she doesn't just share a dumpster with Dr. Barringer but also his failed document destruction plan.

Two more professionals who could have protected their clients, been in compliance with the law, and avoided the negative press for the few dollars a shredding service would cost. Instead they purchased a small shredder and rolled the dice.

Read the full article, sorry no video for this one.

Dr. Alexander, an Albuquerque chiropractor, is the latest business caught dumping private customer information into the trash. His dumpster had files containing his patients name, social security numbers, and birth dates. This is in violation of HIPAA laws regarding the proper disposal of customer records.

Apparently Dr. Alexander's policy of buying a shredder and hoping his employees assign themselves extra work came to the same end as every other person who has tried it. If you don't pay a manager to witness the shredding you need to hire a shredding service. The third option is to get ready for local news to show up with cameras an embarrassing questions.

If you are hoping to break into the German central bank's new vault you might want to go through their dumpster. Instead of shredding the construction plans they just tossed them in the trash where they were found by a hairdresser. The central bank maintains that this does not impact the security of the vault.

If your business has a important documents it is probably time to hire a shredding service.

Private information has been discovered in the dumpster that belonged to the Spruce Grove Child and Family Services Centre in Edmonton. The files were discovered by a man looking for bottles to recycle. The files included allegations of abuse in foster homes, financial statements of foster parents and information about parents whose kids were seized. Police are investigating why the files were dumped into the trash.

I hope the remember to dust of their shredder since the obviously don't bother using it.

A recent survey by the office of the Kentucky Attorney General found that over 25% of business are in violation of the states data protection law. The office looked into the dumpsters of 121 businesses and found 33 with sensitive information that had not been shredded.

Businesses now have legal pressure along with media pressure to shred their documents. Time will tell if http://www.blogger.com/img/gl.quote.gif
insert blockquotethey implements a reliable system or just buy a shredder and hope their employees assign themselves the extra work of shredding.

Las Vegas Police are only the latest department called out to dumpster for personal records. The dumpster contained the personal information of the clients Century 21. The office manager claimed ignorance and said they were in the process of moving.

This is just another case of employees failing to shred their customers personal information. Paper shredders are a security risk to any business.

Details of the case.

Waxahachie High School principal David Nix spent the morning digging in the dumpster. He was pulling out student records that were thrown away instead of being shredded. The records were discovered by a resident and the local media was contacted. David Nix described the incident and "embarrassing" and said he would work to prevent this from happening in the future.

This is just another example of someone relying on a shredder.

The state of Ohio has found personal information in the dumpster outside of a motor vehicles office. It makes you wonder how much shredders that never run cost?

See the video.