Whether you are in your first or last year of college, you need to bring certain important documents with you, including your social security card, identification, health records, immunization records, and possibly legal documents. During your time in college, you will gather additional sensitive documents, such as tax returns. You need to find a way to keep them safe, especially if you have roommates.
It might be difficult to find a way to protect important documents that you shouldn't carry with you, especially if you have a roommate. While some recommend a fireproof lock box, these are easily stolen, taken to another location and broken into.
Instead, keep your documents in a locked fireproof filing cabinet with a good lock – in other words, don't buy a cheap filing cabinet. They are easy to break into. Never tell anyone that you have important documents in the filing cabinet.
Always keep the door to your dorm room or apartment locked, even if you are going to be gone for just a minute. That is all it takes for someone to break in and steal valuables and important documents.
You can also be proactive in protecting your documents by keeping them on a password-protected cloud account if you do not need hard copies. For example, you can keep your health care records on a cloud account and print them when you need to provide them to the school or your doctor.
If you print them, but the requesting party gives the documents back to you after inspecting them, you need to properly destroy them so someone cannot steal them and use them to steal your identity.
One way to ensure no one steals important documents is to shred them. However, if you do not have a crosscut shredder, it is easy enough to tape the documents back together. Keep them locked in the filing cabinet until you get a box full, then contact Shred America to have them shredded.
You can work with your roommates and friends to share the cost of our truck coming out – you'll all get important documents that are no longer needed shredded and will save money on our already reasonable fees.
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When you no longer need to keep certain documents, you can better protect your identity by ensuring that they are shredded by a reputable company. Shred America uses a crosscut shredder to shred documents, bales them and sends them to a recycling plant. You also receive a certificate of destruction once we shred the documents. You can also watch us shred the documents.
When you need to dispose of important documents, keep them locked up until you can schedule an appointment with Shred America.