[Closed] Securely disposing of posted magazine wrappers

WTAF. You think your address is sensitive information?
Goodness.

As above.
Throw them in the bin and stop worrying so much.

What is exactly do you expect them to do with your address knowing your wife subscribes to Woman's Own?

If you’re that bothered, then use one of these to cover the text, then chuck in the bin...

Thanks, I expected answers both ways without explaining why, just that we do really do need to.

Edit: In that case burn them.

Well presumably you'd need to transport them to someone else's bin to dispose of.

Just out of interest, do you put stuff like orange peel in your own bin?

Confused.

Melt/burn them perhaps?
Wouldnt count as "properly" disposal since would create some unpleasant fumes but reckon it would do the trick.

Eat them

I cut the address out, snip it in horizontal cuts all the way up it not quite all the way, turn it 90 then do the same, creating loads of tiny squares with very little on them.

I'm sure it's unnecessary but I've had 1k stolen from my bank account once by identity theft so am a bit paranoid.

Besides, just because you're paranoid, doesn't mean they're not out to get you... 🤘😊🤘

Well, paranoid on not, we put them in a piece of paper that needs shredding and they go through the shredder.

I'm sure it's possible to link my name to my address, but if you had nefarious intent, then I also think it would be easier to get the neighbours info.

Wow

😲

You would think that ‘nuclear weapons expert monthly’ would be online only by now...

Burning is obvious if possible. A whole lot of my dad's financial affairs got used as firelighters in our stove over the past couple of years.

I thought all ermm specialist publications came under plain wrap anyway 🙂
Maybe burn your local library down too just in case anyone pops in there and looks you up....
and take down the internet to stop people paying a small fee to one of the companies who will divulge your name and address.
TBF my wife is just as paranoid with her address labels...where's the eye rolling emoji?

Nuke them from orbit.... it’s the only way.

How are you going to stop any Tom, Dick or Harry going to your local council offices and checking the electoral register?

Your details are public knowledge. And you wonder why millenials get a bad name!!!

Get it shredded so when BBC panorama visit a 3rd world country that's been paid to recycle our waste but they've just illegally dumped it, your name won't be dug up for us all to see on TV.

The real answer is biodegradable wrappers. The BMC Summit magazine now comes in a compostable wrapper. Are you listening Singletrack? 🙂

I'm with you op, I don't like our address with our names going in the bin. Harks back to the days when people 'binned' for info to scam. On the electoral roll, pretty sure if you've ticked the 'unpublished' box your name doesn't appear.

Given how easily the details can be stolen from the company you buy the mags from, or scraped from royal mail en-route, why not just have them delivered to another name, still at your address? I assume there's no problem the secret dump sniffing agents knowing that your house exists?

How are you going to stop any Tom, Dick or Harry going to your local council offices and checking the electoral register?

I’m not that interested.

I assume there’s no problem the secret dump sniffing agents knowing that your house exists?

Wasn’t there a thread where someone wanted their house blurring out on google maps?

Compostable wrappers for the win! Great call. Mark, Chipps what's the additional cost of this? We're doing it with one use coffee cups at our club.

Nuke them from orbit, it's the only way to be sure.

A bit of STW history and Google will probably reveal as much as if not more personal information.

Can sympathise with the OP. MrsT has a seriously high security clearance for her work(soon to be retired). We slash & Burn rather than shred & bin.....

Plastic wrappers can be recycled with supermarket bags. You would have to be keen to go through that lot. If you want it to be secure, cut the address box out and recycle that on a different week. Two if you want to separate the names.

All the paper bits get burnt or buried at our end, frankly I don't think anyone is going to be discovered that the house we live in exists, it's how you connect the meta data that's important.

Can't help feeling that if I was that paranoid about things, I'd be getting things delivered to a PO Box under a false name.

Can sympathise with the OP. MrsT has a seriously high security clearance for her work(soon to be retired).

Well you certainly better not go telling people about that....

Cut off the address labels and wrap them in the tin foil you throw away after making hats.

"MrsT has a seriously high security clearance for her work(soon to be retired)."

You never told us you're married to Theresa May!

Can sympathise with the OP. MrsT has a seriously high security clearance for her work

Mmmmm. no sympathy here. if it's that critical, send the mags to work or read them on line.
Its far easier to get the details from a mag mailing list than your bin
FFS

By the way. I know where you live

And what you read

Cheers

POSTIE

MrsT has a seriously high security clearance for her work

And she will thank you for highlighting that Im sure

Mine self-destruct after five seconds. [genuine mode] If that doesn't happen you can stretch the address bit in different directions, a bit like a swirly image effect in Photoshop. Scissors (plastic jams up in the shredder) or burn [/genuine mode]

Really ?

OP please explain more

Personally I'm more aware now off both personal online presence and all the data stored online about me (from bank to tax, council tax, car info, insurance info etc).

Just buy a garden burner and burn them if you're that worried.

Does anyone still have their name on their front door. Still common in most flats and tenements IME.

I think for me it came from getting frequent deliveries of bike parts and power tools over the years and the thinking that anything simple I can do so that there aren't big boxes knocking about on their onward journey to being pulped with Makita, Axminster Power Tools or Chain Reaction Cycles emblazoned on them along with the address where these bike parts and power tools are probably stored can't hurt.

I suppose I do that with most mail now without really thinking about it. Meh...

It's nothing to do with my security clearance 😊

Go easy on OP. He's only 22 so has had to suffer the indignities of Blair's education system. He will have a bucket load of A* grades and a couple of degrees but will know nothing that the internet hasn't told him.

It's not his fault poor dear. Unfortunately for the rest of us he is the future.

With a couple more minutes googling, I know I could work out where the husband of an ultra high security cleared MrsT lives. I would have thought there is plenty more detail for anyone with enough patience to keep looking 🙂

I’ve removed our house number and name. They might know it but they’ll never find us.

Can sympathise with the OP. MrsT has a seriously high security clearance for her work(soon to be retired). We slash & Burn rather than shred & bin…..

Some of my colleagues do too, it’s about checking you’re not dodgy, not about keeping your identity covert.

Unless of course you’re disposing of marked items at home which puts you in breach of many rules.

Said OP is 52 so escaped Blair's education system by some margin and it was an engineering apprenticeship rather that A Levels and Degrees, luckily said apprenticeship was in Telecommunications and having worked in that same sector for the last 36 years he know's a little bit about the internet 🙂 Unluckily for some presently designing and delivering some of the Telecoms and internet services you rely on today.

Compostable wrappers for the win! Great call. Mark, Chipps what’s the additional cost of this? We’re doing it with one use coffee cups at our club.

There’s a material that’s been available for decades, and it’s biodegradable. It’s called Cellophane...

I still think the easiest way is to use one of those mammoth Sharpies, the ink will often dissolve the printer ink used on the bag, so it’s impossible to read anything underneath, it takes seconds, and the bag can be binned straight away. It’s what I do to any packaging labels I can’t peel off, which I try to do with Jiffybags, so I can reuse them.

Can sympathise with the OP. MrsT has a seriously high security clearance for her work(soon to be retired). We slash & Burn rather than shred & bin…..

IME people who like to make claims they have a high security clearance, don’t.

There’s a material that’s been available for decades, and it’s biodegradable. It’s called Cellophane…

But not compostable unlike cellulose which has the advantage of not requiring a highly toxic process to manufacture.

Can sympathise with the OP. MrsT has a seriously high security clearance for her work(soon to be retired). We slash & Burn rather than shred & bin…..

But gets post sent to your home address with her name on? Either your perception of the threat is exaggerated or your security is inadequate.

Completely OTT and if anything just gives you some false sense of security. Your address is public knowledge and easily discoverable by a number of means. If anyone was specifically targetting you and wanted to go through your rubbish they'd already know when you live rather than just looking through the landfill for bags with stuff with your details in it.
That said just melt it it if you really need to, takes a second with a lighter

It’s not about stealing just your address, though, is it? It’s about being able to build a profile of a person in a few seconds.

Address : check
Shopping : Tesco
Workplace : St Elsewhere hospital
Journal : Physiotherapy (they’re a physiotherapist)
One of those things from the bank saying they’ve changed their T&Cs (now we know which bank they use)
Hobbies: etc etc
Packing slip for the recent stuff you bought online - maybe there’s an email address at the bottom of the address line.

It’s not unreasonable to be conscious about the data you’re giving away via your recycling bin.

Whilst aggregation of information is an important principal to be aware of when dealing with security classification etc. I don't really see how hobbies etc. are of much relevance. Sure they could be used to help refine a spear-phising attack or something but that seems highly unlikely here. Shredding anything from a bank (and not just correspondence with financial info in it) is worth doing but that's not what's being talked about here, it's magazine covers...

It’s not about stealing just your address, though, is it?

It's exactly what it is, they're sticky labels with an address on not banking details.

I don't care about the whys and wherefores, but isn't the answer in the OP -

anything we consider sensitive it gets shredded

??

I cut the address and personal detail bits off most letters and packages before it goes into recycling. Yeah it's paranoid, but not hard to build up an image of what banks, credit cards I'm using and more importantly things I'm buying and tag the address as of interest to burgle. Basically more the opportunist who's sorting junk at the recycling, spots something of interest and an address on it.

Though there's still the postie worker or delivery guy who has access to the information before delivery.

What magazines I'm subscribing to, yeah, not so fussed. But then I don't subscribe to physical magazines any more anyway. Only things are a few magazines that come as part of some other subscription (National Trust for example).

The wrappers at the moment just go in the bin, though I would like the ability to easily recycle plastic wrapping, not just magazines but also stuff from the supermarket. Easily as in at the kerb, not a trek to a recycling centre. Or better stop with the plastic.

Basically more the opportunist who’s sorting junk at the recycling, spots something of interest and an address on it.

That is a lot of effort to get in there for a nice TV...

For the OP if you have concearns like that then the question should be asked of the security dep at work. Or the obvious get the mags sent to work.
Other option include putting the wrappers in the secure disposal at work.

It’s not unreasonable to be conscious about the data you’re giving away via your recycling bin.

I avoid putting anything with our address on in the recycling bin just in case their is stuff in there that breaks the rules.....

May be a surprise but some people in so called public service jobs do get quite nasty threats from random nutters...keeping your home address off radar as much as possible goes with the territory

It’s not unreasonable to be conscious about the data you’re giving away via your recycling bin.

Yet most people happily give Facebook and Google far more without even considering it.

The effort to physically get data about someone means that they must already have been targeted as 'of interest' before their bins are gone through. If you're being investigated for specific known reasons then fair enough to be paranoid but if a piece of paper with your address on it is part of a 50 tonne recycling batch then it's just not worth anyone's while to pick it out.

If you’re that secret squirrel, take them into work, put them in a confi waste sack. Or speak to your operational security advisor, I’m sure they could do with a good laugh.

"On the electoral roll, pretty sure if you’ve ticked the ‘unpublished’ box your name doesn’t appear."

No.

Bloody hell, I’m pretty sure the op didn’t ask for 2 pages of critiquing his reasoning for wanting to redact his personal information from the bin...

Plenty of reasons for doing this. I do it myself especially when I have work details on the packaging.

OP can’t you shred all the cellophane packets into a seperate bag once a month day and then just dispose of those? Shredder should cope with it well enough.

I’m pretty sure the op didn’t ask for 2 pages of critiquing his reasoning ..

He's a newby then? 😉

I do it myself especially when I have work details on the packaging.

Becuase technically that's commercial waste and you're not allowed to dispose of it in your domestic bin, technically?

I do it myself especially when I have work details on the packaging.

‘Mega-Spies Inc’

No.

Whilst technically true ticking the box does make it harder to find the details.
As for shredding address stuff. I generally do so but that is mostly because I got a shredder for stuff that really is confidential (bank statements and the like) so might as well use it on the rest.

Bloody hell, I’m pretty sure the op didn’t ask for 2 pages of critiquing his reasoning for wanting to redact his personal information from the bin…

Well this is STW, what else do you expect? The OP's request was answered pretty quickly anyway, obfuscate with a permanent marker or melt/burn the address. So if he really needed to be told that then he got his answer without having to carry on reading to page 2. So the rest of us, likely being bored at work, choose to focus our efforts on undermining the legitimacy of the original requirement. All pretty standard stuff...

Struggling to see the security risk in having your address on envelopes in the bin at your address TBH. "Bloody hell, the people who live here live here!" I'm not sure as knowing you subscribe to Cosmo means that n'er-do-wells are going to break in and steal your telly or clone your credit card.

Recycling Good though, of course.