What You Throw Out Could Haunt You

Dear Ms. St. James,

I found the advice in your recent column offering guidance on retaining personal and financial records both helpful and timely. However, as a banker involved with personal privacy regulations, there was an omission in your advice that I'd like to call to your attention -- namely, ensuring that your discarded information is not fraudulently used by others.

Simply throwing financial records away is no longer a safe practice. There's increasing concern in our industry about identity theft and the spiraling cost of the resulting financial and emotional abuse on the public.

As one source of information on the subject, I offer the following excerpt on preventing identity theft from our bank's privacy notice that we will soon mail to all customers. This is hardly an exhaustive list -- just a few ideas to get the point across to our customers that their personal information is another commodity to a criminal.

Law-enforcement professionals report that cases of financial fraud and identity theft (persons who steal your good name and use it for criminal activity) are on the rise. This means that protecting your personal and financial information requires your ongoing commitment, as well as ours.

According to the Federal Trade Commission, important common-sense steps you can take to protect your personal and financial information include: