On 3 Sep 2004 08:04:26 GMT, wrote:

Andy Hall wrote:

I can't believe someone is going to bothered to root around in my bin to
piece together recipts/bills etc.

Don't you believe it.

A former colleague living in Switzerland had exactly this happen. He
lived close to the parliament in Bern in a district where mainly
business people and politicians resided. In typical tidy fashion,
there was a local ordinance that rubbish should not be put out more
than 4 hours before the appointed collection time. For him this was
1400, but of course he left for work at 0730 each day, so of course
put out the rubbish along with everyone else in the street immediately
before leaving.

One day, the colleague arrived home to find an official notice that he
should attend the local police station because of a complaint - the
subject being Abfall (rubbish).
He duly went there, only to meet a group of his neighbours and a very
weary police sergeant who explained that he, too, was aggrieved
because he had had a complaint from one of the politicians about the
rubbish. In order to identify the culprits, he had had to send out
his men at 0955 (just before the appointed time limit) to check
people's rubbish and look for envelopes etc. to identify who it
belonged to. My colleague was a definite shredaholic and everything
including junk mail went through his machine.

The police showed him a piece of paper with pieces of one of his
shredded envelopes stuck to it, reformed as his name and address..

If it can happen in Bern it can happen in Leeds.

His area of Bern was also described as "soho", but that was for a
different reason.

... not really an argument pointing towards the great likelihood of
identity theft though is it! :-)


True - however sometimes people will go to great lengths......


..andy

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