Thanks for the tips Paul. And thanks for the clarification on cross cutting, as I look down at my bag of maybe 20 shreaded unused check books. Makes me wonder, if I shread the document the right way, the strip will be long, but you'll only see a few letters per line, thus making any information difficult to obtain. If I shread it the wrong way, yes, you can read entire widths of my document. Is shreading it the "right way" good enough?

Oh, and you recycle shreaded paper?? Darn, my stupid county doesn't accept junk mail recycling anymore.

And about paranoia, consider this: You've got a tight defense on your identity, but ONE slip up and it could be identity thieft. Worse, what if your identity was stolen and "put on a list" before you started your defenses? It could be used at a later date, subverting all your hard work.

My point is, should I start obsessively protecting my identity (in junk mail, in person, and online) even though I've been slightly careless about it up until now? I don't want to do all that obsessive work for nothing, basicaly.

That and I don't want to throw all that junk mail in the trash as shreaded paper. I really want to recycle it....