Wow, so dumpster diving really does happen?? Sure in the UK, but coming from Paul who lives near me, that hits kind of close to home.

I recently saw a privacy survey which listed many best-practices for dealing with junk mail and other disposables. (sorry I just can't find the link). I'm on the fence about just how paranoid I should be. Shread everything with my real credit card # on it? Shread unused checks from closed accounts? Shread ALL credit card offers? Tear my address off stuff and shread that?

Currently, I put all junk mail in recycling (which, for the past year, has been building up in my garage since nobody takes junk mail in my county any more). That seems to make dumpster diving even easier. Makes me wonder if I should just burn down my garage with all the junk mail in it instead of finding a place which will take it.

And what is "cross cutting" anyway? I have a simple Aurora 10sheet shreader (with credit card slot). Will that do a good enough job?

Thoughts? Best-practices? Threat vectors? Horror stories?