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.

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.

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.

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.

If you have ever done business or worked at the U-Care Thrift store in Mesa you might want to keep a close eye on your credit report. The reason is that the store was recently discovered to have boxes of employment applications sitting behind their location. And how was this discovered? Joe Torres found copies of drivers licenses blowing down the alley as he was donating clothes.

This is not only a violation of the Fair and Accurate Credit Transaction Act (FACTA) but an Arizona law that requires businesses to destroy records containing employees’ personal information. However, the penalty is a paltry $100 fine for a first violation and only $1,000 for a second.

The owner said that they shred everything but clearly that is not the case. Just another example where a few dollars for a shredding service would have saved the business and the employees.