Dear Editor:
RE: ‘Identity theft is not a joke’: local woman proposes township purchase community document shredder (this letter appeared in the April 4 issue of the Advertiser’s sister publication North Wellington Community News).
Thank you to Wellington North council, who referenced Crime Stoppers Guelph Wellington’s (CSGW) annual shredding events. We appreciate you advocating for us and our work. We have been discussing identity theft and how to prevent it for almost a decade.
Identity theft can be prevented in a number of ways, including the professional and secure shredding of documents. We currently hold these events in Mount Forest and Guelph but are open to offering the service at other communities throughout Wellington County.
At our shredding event in Mount Forest, in partnership with Wellington North Fire Service (WNFS)/Township of Wellington North, the documents are shredded on site and customers never have to leave their vehicles. This has been the model since 2015. The event runs from 9am to noon – a direct result of the interest from the community. If there is more demand, we’d gladly stay open longer.
We are proud of our relationship with Wasteco, a professional and secure organization with a solid reputation in document destruction. Anyone who has been to a CSGW shredding event knows it is a well-organized system and there is no opportunity for anyone to look at the documents, never mind photograph them. This simply would not happen.
Wasteco also provides secure destruction certificates to businesses with professional requirements for secure destruction.
As far as a fire hazard, we work closely with WNFS as a host and to ensure we meet their requirements for a safe event. Therefore, the safety of the documents and everyone on site is assured. We thank them for the use of their parking lot for this important community service.
Speaking of fire, some may choose to burn their documents. Burn bans are common now, meaning outdoor burning is not permitted. There is also the risk of a gust of wind blowing a partially incinerated document away from your burn pile. Shredding events are good value for the cost, which, thanks to local sponsors means these funds go directly to CSGW for our work in community safety.
There’s also the matter of the time it takes to burn a quantity of documents even in your fireplace, or even shredding them with a personal shredder, versus the seconds it takes for the massive truck to pulverize the same amount.
We invite Ms. Lippai, and anyone else concerned about identity theft, to join us on Sept. 14 at the Mount Forest shredding event at the WNFS. We are proud to offer this public service to the community and are delighted each year to see the overwhelming support from loyal customers in the Wellington North area.
And we wholeheartedly agree, identity theft is not a joke.
Sarah Bowers-Peter,
Program coordinator,
Crime Stoppers Guelph Wellington