Do you receive bills or statements from banks? Ever wonder why they need to print credit card/account numbers all over the pages?
I still haven’t figure out why. It’s good that I do not have many card bills or statements to go through, but I can’t imagine how others deal with them especially for different cards statements from different banks.
There was once I almost threw away pieces of statements that weren’t conveying any important figures, but yet had my card number printed amongst the horde of information on it! Isn’t a bill number sufficient for the bank to process our payment?
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After that incident, I bought a manual cross-cut shredder that is more secure than a straight cut one (no we are not talking about hair-style) since it is easier to re-construct a shredded document from a straight-cut machine.
It is better to be safe than sorry. I noticed many overseas online-stores are more secure from the way they handle your sensitive information. At least the bills, statements or invoices that they sent via courier or wire do not print the entire credit card number string but a partial one or even omitting it altogether (”payment via credit card” is sufficient since I am the one paying).
So why can’t DBS do that? I am not sure. Perhaps it is costly for them to adjust their IT system. And since we can’t change the way a bank works, we better change the way we handle our bills and statements.
There are other techniques to destroy sensitive printed material, I personally tried incineration and water soaking, but the novelty of such techniques wears out over time especially if it has to be done periodically.
If you have lots of printed material to deal with, I would suggest an electric cross-cut shredder or bring to an office that has one!
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