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These days, a home shedding machine is almost a necessity. With the constant barrage of credit card offers, bills, and bank statements that hit our mailbox everyday, it is no wonder that close to 1 million people are victims of identity theft each year.

Whether you live in a house or an apartment complex, there are usually several points where your trash could possibly be accessed and documents stolen.

1. The majority of apartment complexes don’t have secure trash chutes and it can in fact be very easy for dumpster divers to gather data about the apartment dwellers.
2. In some apartment complexes there are locked trash chutes which are great for the inhabitants because it limits access to the dumpsters to basically the maintenance map and in the trash collectors.
3. However, shredding sensitive data is not that hard, and might make your life easier in the long run.

Here are a few things to consider when choosing a home paper shredder.

Durability is important: You want a machine that is strong and will blast through lots of documents without jamming and without needing repair. Some document shredders are simply too weak, and will jam if you try to shred more than a few pieces of paper at a time.

Cutting method: There are several types of cuts available, ranging from plain old strip cuts (the least secure, but often adequate), to confetti cuts which cut the paper into much finer strips and also cross cut, which cuts the paper in more than one direction.

For most home documents, a plain old strip cutter may be all that is needed. The idea is to prevent a dumpster diver from getting a hold of your financial information, and I'd venture to guess that few to none would be patient enough to reconstruct a strip-shredded document.