I am getting what can be considered a normal amount of paper spam. Per week, this are 2-5 unwelcome credit card offers, 1-2 offers to join organizations I have never heard of, 1 "coupon book" from local shops, 1-2 invitations to subscribe to IT magazines and 1-2 "follow-up" catalogs from online stores I ever shopped. All this garbage contains pieces of information that can be valuable to the identity theft crooks. As it is valuable to them, it is dangerougs to me.
The rule of privacy protection thumb says that discarding paper spam is very unsafe because dumpster-divers can use it to steal your identity. Rather, it should be destroyed. Hand-tearing paper spam doesn't work because it's unreliable and time-consuming (tens of minutes per week, hours per year). That is where the paper shredders come handy.
And that's where the main surprise waited for me: most of the under-$50 shredders that you can buy at Office Max, Staples or at any other store are simply not cut for the job. I had two shredders of this kind and they died on me after about 3 months of moderate use. Another problem with the small shredders that they cannot handle unopened envelopers and the envelopes need to be opened and the content should be fed into the shredder manually.
So, after being tired of the unreliability and inconveniences of the cheap-and-small shredders I have developer a requirements list.
The shredder should:
1. Shred unopened envelopes, which means minimum 12 pages thick.
2. Have a cross-cutting shredding pattern for better information destruction.
3. Have a large shredded paper bin to reduce the number of roundtrips to the dumpster, preferably to once per two weeks.
4. Be able to shred CDs.
5. Be durable, which translates to serving for at least a year.
After doing an extensive research I selected Powershred SB-97Cs:
At the moment you can get it for $235 with shipment. I have used it for four months and I can say that it is worth every penny. This is one die-hard shredder. It works according to the requirements and can gulp without wincing 15-pages thick load (17 max). The added bonus is that it has a sensor that safeguards from sticking one's finger in.
The only thing to keep in mind that it is bigger than a full-tower PC case, so the best place for this machine is a closet. And don't forget to get shredder oil for periodic lubrication. Shredders like it.
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