No Shortage of Documents to Shred at BBB Event
YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio -- The Protect Your Identity project of the Better Business Bureau Saturday saw no letup of people bringing boxes of documents to be shredded in the parking lot of Covelli Centre.
The BBB asked that people bring no more than three boxes and the vast majority brought three, said BBB executive director Carol Potter. The 200th car pulled in about 10:45 a.m. and the two trucks from Alpha Omega Document Management, Canfield, never stopped shredding. Workers, including football players and tennis players from Youngstown State University, fed the shredders as they ate the paper and made a racket.
BBB staff and the YSU athletes carried the empty cardboard boxes to a huge dumpster provided by the Green Team at the edge of the parking lot.
An assistant athletics director, Jesse Potter, solicited 15 athletes and members of the department staff to help out, said his mother, Carol Potter, and that extra help made the lines move faster and more efficiently this year.
One source of identity theft is stolen personal documents, Potter noted, and people often hold onto documents longer than they need to, concerned that simply throwing them is not a good idea. One person brought 30 years of tax returns, for example.
People also brought medical records and prescription labels as well as other documents that contained their Social Security numbers, such as bank records and investment accounts. At least eight waited until they saw that their documents were fed into one of the Alpha Omega trucks before driving off, Potter said.
She could see the relief on the faces of many as they left the parking lot, Potter said.
Couples were in roughly 20% of the cars that drove through the lines, Potter said, and people 50 and older made up the preponderance of those in line. Women were more likely than men to realize documents should be disposed of.
The local BBB is one of 114 offices of the organization that strives to encourage ethical behavior in business, Potter said, and each office holds a document shredding day, all with a couple months of when returns must be filed with the Internal Revenue Service.
Farmers Trust Co. sponsored the BBB’s Protect Your I.D. event, the first time the trust company has underwritten the effort.
Copyright The Business Journal, Youngstown, Ohio.
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