How to properly trash a Credit Card

I received my new debit card and needed to get rid of the old one, since the number is the same I wanted to be sure no one would know it:





Used a scissor for the job and then I tossed the remains in two different buckets.
Me paranoid? :lolsign:


Pablo

You left a fair amount of the magnetic strip intacted (at least in the pictures)...

-Bill

What? you didn't burn the remains and rent a boat to dump the debris at sea??? :shakehead

Yep, that does the trick. A quick swipe with a magnet helps too.

I cut mine into pieces then feed the remains into a crosscut shredder. Much the same result.

Daniel

(When I saw the thread title, I expected to see Pablo's latest purchase which would have maxxed out the card. )

I was planning on being the 5th civil to visit space for the task but then I realized its going to cost me a fortune and Im afraid of heights

Not enough mag strip to read anything there with standard equipment


Pablo

I have a fairly heavy duty cross cut shredder and it chops up cards with no trouble, just by dropping them into the paper slot. Lighter duty shredders these days have a separate slot for credit cards (and sometimes cd-roms) where I guess they apply more force than the paper slot applies, maybe by running slower or something (I haven't tried one).

PEU said:

Me paranoid?

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Not at all, I do the same thing; I even scratch the magnetic strip off and deface the hologram before cutting. I actually do this with anything that comes in the mail with my name/addy on it. I also cut fellow CPF'ers return address labels in little pieces.

B@rt said:

What? you didn't burn the remains and rent a boat to dump the debris at sea??? :shakehead

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I'd prefer b@rts way actually....all the discarded bank accounts, notes and cards burned outside with propane weed burner then potted with organic stuff....

you want my bank numbers? its under the lawn

b@rt always have the best ideas....

Crosscut shreader next the mail box... ANYTHING with name and/or address goes right in.

And my main mailing address is a PO Box--so they don't even have a "real address" to case...

-Bill

Honestly I think some of you are a little paranoid.

WILL IT BLEND?

http://youtube.com/watch?v=9Z1qix6W8Gs

If you haven't already, this series is a must-watch!

I'm surprised there isn't more encouragement for private individuals to destroy CDs. Any business is obligated under law to destroy private data, including data written to magnetic and optical medium, but it seems there is far too little reminders for individuals that their out-of-date CD hold a lot of personal data.

I feed mine into a shredder that accepts CDs, but for simple data destruction for individual purposes could be taken care of quickly and effectively without even using electrical power equipment. If someone would make a device similar to a hamburger press, with many sharp pinpoint size indentations, then one could pop their CD into it, give it a squeeze, and toss it into the trash. It wouldn't pass government dictated methods of destruction, but it would render too useless for any identity thief to attempt rescue.

I do the same Pablo, the remains go into two different lots of rubish.
Norm

PEU said:

Me paranoid?

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Not really. I have yet to dispose of any of my old credit cards because I don't trust that some motivated individual won't find some way to reassemble the pieces, or at least enough of them to get the number. Probably better to keep them anyway as souvenirs. Seriously, how much space does even a few dozen old credit cards take up anyway?

On the subject of disposing of CDs, I do my backups on RW disks so I don't come across that problem.

Empath said:

I'm surprised there isn't more encouragement for private individuals to destroy CDs.

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CDs are easy....I use 400 grit sandpaper on mine...thinkgeek sells a CD shredder. Personally I dont worry too much, CDs that I no longer want are drilled and hanged on my room's ceiling

its the hard drives that takes some work, not only is it not flammable, I cant get the drive assembly to open

I, too, cut up my old credit cards into many many pieces with scissors, as well as disposing of the pieces in at least two different waste baskets. One of them gets emptied just about every week, and the other maybe once a month or so. I'd rather be safe than sorry. If the shredder I currently use kicks the bucket, I'll get one that shreds cds and credit cards.

There are CD destruction gizmos that apply little pinprick patterns but that really doesn't seem so reliable. You can cut a CD in half with a tin snips or heavy duty scissors so if you want to just get rid of a few now and then, that's a reasonable method. It's probably also an ok to get rid of a credit card (cut all the numbers real tiny).

There are some security doctrines that say to shred ALL your discarded paper, whether it has sensitive contents or not, to deny the adversary any info about what type of contents you consider sensitive, or on which days you've got sensitive paper to dispose of (i.e. if you routinely throw out bags of shredded paper every day, you don't tip anyone off like an occasional unusual bag might).

Someone observed a few years back that the Washington DC pizza parlors were the first to know when the US was about to launch a military operation, because there would be a flurry of late night pizza orders from the Pentagon. I don't know what if anything they did about that, but the paper shredder policy above is based on the same idea.

Putting CDs in a microwave is an entertaining way to destroy them. Might not be ideal for microwaves you are fond of.

Illum_the_nation said:

CDs are easy....I use 400 grit sandpaper on mine...thinkgeek sells a CD shredder. Personally I dont worry too much, CDs that I no longer want are drilled and hanged on my room's ceiling

its the hard drives that takes some work, not only is it not flammable, I cant get the drive assembly to open

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You have to peel off the label, there is usually a tiny screw hidden under it. You will need a tiny set of torx screwdrivers, sears sells a set or sometimes you can ones to fit those multi bit screwdrivers.

I cut my card up and throw away half at home and half at work so it would be difficult to find the parts.

Illum_the_nation said:

its the hard drives that takes some work, not only is it not flammable, I cant get the drive assembly to open

Click to expand...

There is software which writes 1 and 0s to the entire drive. This makes the data all but unrecoverable except maybe to a forensics lab with very special equipment. In other words, unless you have super secret data on your hard disk which somebody would go to extraordinary lengths to recover most people are perfectly safe rewriting the drive before selling or disposing of it.