Have You Looked In Your Trash Bins Lately?
It shouldn't still amaze me, but it does, how often so many organizations just dump huge amounts of printed paper containing tons of personally identifiable information (PII) right into their dumpster sitting behind their building, in the alley, or some other easily reachable public location.
Here's yet another example of a business throwing away people's privacy in their trash dumpster...
"Ft. Lauderdale Dumpster Becomes A Treasure Trove"
"Outside a University of Phoenix Building in Ft. Lauderdale, files and paperwork belonging to the defunct First Magnus Financial at 550 West Cypress Creek Road were just lying inside stacked boxes inside an industrial garbage container, available for anyone to peek at. The paperwork contains some of the most sensitive information a consumer could posses: Social Security numbers, credit card information, addresses, properties, etc."
Put this into your file of examples to use within your information security and privacy training content and awareness communications.
One of these days I'm going to do an experiment...or two or more...of my own to see what kind of trash I can find in the cities I visit. I did this several years ago, and it's about time I do it again. The youth writer for my Q2 2008 issue of "Protecting Information" did something similar...perhaps it would be a good class project to get several of my youth writers and/or my sons' schools involved in an experiment such as this.
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