Working in Compliance with Disposal Requirements
Document Destruction Laws... The US cost for Identity Theft was approximately $50 billion in 2007, affecting 8.4 million people. The most common way that your identity gets stolen is through improperly discarded paper waste.
Consumer privacy has become a very public issue - governments worldwide are enacting legislation mandating the secure disposal of various types of information. Listed below are some of the legislative acts regarding document security and identity theft.
HIPAA - Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) enacted in 1996, includes provisions intended to safeguard the privacy of patient health records. Institutions that retain patient health information must comply with HIPAA. Hospitals, insurance offices, doctors, dentists, psychiatrists, and urgent care offices are required by law to safeguard patient information.
GLBA - The Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act of 1999 (also known as the Financial Services Modernization Act) also addresses privacy issues. The privacy provisions in the law require that financial institutions and insurance companies give consumers prior notice of an intention to share personal information and a chance to opt out of the sharing of such information. The law suggests that paper documents containing such personal information should also be protected and safely destroyed.
http://www.ftc.gov/privacy/privacyinitiatives/glbact.html
http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2004/06/factaidt.htm
FACTA - The Fair and Accurate Transactions Act establishes a national system of fraud detection so victims can alert all three major credit rating agencies with a single phone call. Employers must destroy personal information about their employees, if they got the information from a credit report.
