As Indian Summer brings warms days and cool nights, it is good to get out in the garage and do something, which is my case is the wholly therapeutic task of throwing things away.
This means boxes -- and I've got a lot of them -- of documents. Yep, crack a beer and start weeding through boxes of old documents, throwing out old papers, and listening to the blissful hum of the shredder for those with confidential information.
There is a lot of that. In addition to my own old tax returns, bank and credit card statements, I've got a small mountain of papers that clients sent me or I procured in litigation, having all sorts of stuff that an identity thief would love to have.
Social security numbers -- I've got them. Credit card numbers, I've got those too. Information relating to assets and wire transfers, they are in abundance. In fact, I am constantly amazed at how much confidential information that I end up with. Really, the x-rays of my client's finances are in my hand.
Which is why I go through them box by box, paper by paper, and run them through my cross-cut shredder so that they forever disappear from the universe of useable data.
But not every professional does this. I remember some years ago, a friend who was an accountant was moving and I went by his office to pick up a desired piece of furniture that he no longer wanted, and I was amazed to see his old client files being spread among the trash bins. Yep, social security numbers, income information, and all sorts of other personal information, there for the taking. The office building he was in would simply gather up the trash can and empty them into the unsecured dumpster next to a major street -- it would be a dumpster diver's treasure trove.
Truth is, most clients would be horrified if they knew what happened (or didn't happen) to their files when their matter ended.
Which brings me to the point of this article: If you give confidential information to a professional, whether an attorney, accountant, or financial advisor, you'd better either get that information back or make sure that it is discarded. Be proactive: Don't expect the professional to give it a high priority, because it will never be.
Many firms do not have anything like a document destruction policy, and even when they do they are not clear on how or when things will be discarded. "Destruction" might mean, as with my accountant friend, simply throwing the papers into the trash basket. Or, it might mean giving the papers to a service that shreds them.
The latter is probably adequate, but I myself don't really trust third parties when it comes to such important data. The company might mean well, but all it would take to make one miserable is for one errant and needy employee to start taking juicy documents home to sell to identity thieves.
Ask your professional how your documents will be maintained, and what their procedure is for getting rid of old documents. Then, to quote Reagan, "trust but verify." The absolute safest way to deal with some information is to reacquire it yourself, and shred it yourself -- that's the only way you'll know it really is gone.
Many states have laws that require professionals to keep certain documents for a period of years (usually five) unless the client agrees to the contrary. I put in my engagement letters that at the conclusion of the matter, the documents will either be returned to the client on their request, or destroyed. Usually, clients don't ask for the documents back -- I am a stickler about not accepting originals whenever possible -- and so the copies of the documents go into the shredder. (And, no, I don't bill them for this service).
Even with your own documents, you should try not to keep older non-critical documents around any longer than you need to, meaning that once the Statute of Limitations has run, you should get rid of your older documents too. For tax documents, usually there is no need to keep them longer than four years after the date that you file your tax returns, unless it was some really funky transaction that you are particularly worried about.
These days, in nearly all courts, electronically-maintained copies are as good as originals. What this means is that you are better to buy a good scanner, and keep your documents electronically. I will usually scan critical documents in, and then encrypt the files with some software (I've found I like Steganos as being the easiest), and then burn those files to a DVD or Blu-Ray disc -- after which, the physical copies are discarded. A single 25gb Blu-Ray disc can hold the equivalent of a dozen boxes of documents, and even if somebody were to steal the disc (better to keep it in a safe deposit box or somewhere, but just saying) it would be useless to them if encrypted.
Don't just throw your old documents in the trash, either, without shredding. There are actually services that do nothing but "trash pulls" that are hired by attorneys and private investigators to go out to your house on trash day, and right before the garbage truck gets to your house, throws you garbage in the back of a pickup and takes it back to some office where it is sorted for confidential information. As a creditor-debtor attorney, hardly a week goes by that I'm not solicited by some such service for their trash pull services at some new low rate.
Trash pulls are not just for debtors hiding assets -- they are also used by business competitors to try to find out how much money such-and-such is making, to determine their profitability and vulnerability. Then, there are the identity thieves who steal trash in high-end neighborhoods for their own purposes.
As I mentioned at the outset of this writing, I find the task of throwing stuff away -- and particularly shredding documents -- to be highly therapeutic. Every time some matter goes into the shredder, it is as if my brain goes, "OK, I don't have to worry about that anymore" and feels correspondingly lighter. I am in better head space after shredding documents, although in honesty the beer might have something do with it too. Unclutter your documents and your brain will unclutter as well.
Oh, and by the way, your significant other will appreciate the extra space too.
This article at http://onforb.es/PknCta and http://goo.gl/uGifb
