Fellowes Shredder

To introduce you to the importance of owning a shredder, let me cover a few important points before moving on to the product review. Financial Crimes Fraud accounts for five percent of the Gross Domestic Product in the United States every year. The primary ways that an individuals identity becomes compromised are through Skimming, Hacking, Phishing and Pharming. Skimming requires the complicity of an individual at the point of sale. This individual moves your credit card over a "reader" while processing the card through the system at the store or restaurant you are visiting. This reader is a small device that captures your information for transfer to a PC at a later time. Hacking is not as complicated as it may seem. This happens when a criminal hacks the point of sale terminal at a business, capturing any financial information that is transmitted via that terminal. In this manner, it does not require any complicity of an employee of that business. The business normally will not even know that their terminal has been compromised. Anyone reading this article has probably been targeted by Phishing. This is one of those emails that tells you that you need to update your account information at E-Bay or Bank X. If you click on the hyper-link in the email, it will take you to a site that resembles the official website for the financial institution...however it is a scam site with a URL that does not match your banks web address. This website asks you to input your password, at which time you have compromised your account. Hint: Never click the URL in an email to get to any of your accounts...visit the website directly. Also, your bank will never ask you to click a URL in an e-mail to begin with. Pharming is accomplished by Domain Spoofing, which is difficult to get around...you are unknowingly redirected to a spoof website. These types of attacks are aimed at the domain itself, and are usually spotted quickly by the financial institution. Finally, the low tech approach to identity theft...dumpster diving. This may also be done by stealing from your mailbox. Dumpster diving is nothing more than picking through your garbage searching for financial information. You might be surprised how much information about yourself you put in the trash. Protect yourself by ensuring that none of this information is usable.

My Past Experience with Fellowes
Along with this shredder, I have also owned the Fellowes 300, which is an expandable shredder that adjusts to fit a wastebasket of your choosing. The wastebasket does not come with the shredder. I also currently own a PS30, which (like the 300) is a ribbon-style shredder. These shredders are effective shredders, although ribbons are still capable of being reconstructed. The objective here is to make it more trouble than it's worth. These ribbon shredders both have worn down over the years, and no longer shred as effectively as they did initially. I imagine the blades become dull from all of the paper. These blades are contained within the unit and are difficult to get to, although they may have a device that can sharpen the blades. I don't know how much that would cost, but considering these shredders are inexpensive, it may not be worth your while to even try. I have not tried to find a way to sharpen them, opting instead to purchase a new one, and using the old ones as a backup.

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