Identity theft is far from an uncommon problem not only here in the United States, but in many other places all throughout the world. However, identity theft is a particularly common threat for people who live here, in the United States. And there’s certainly no doubt about it that having your identity stolen can all but upend your life – and it can do that too, as well.

And identity theft is more prevalent than ever before, affecting businesses and individual people alike. In fact, the year of 2015 alone so more than two hundred and seventy five data breaches in the medical field along. These breaches were conducted at medical facilities as well as other such healthcare facilities and ended up impacting more than one hundred and ten million people in just that one year alone.

And in that same year of 2015, businesses suffered their fair share of data breaches as well – more than three hundred and ten of them. In total, more than sixteen million people were impacted by said data breaches, from the people who worked for the company or business in question to the people who did business with them. And in the three (nearly four) years that have transpired since, more and more people have had their lives changed – sometimes forever changed – but such an identity breach.

In fact, the year of 2016 saw even more cases of identity theft all throughout the country of the United States, a jump between the year of 2015 and the year of 2016 by more than fifteen percent (sixteen percent, to be more exact). By the time the year was drawing to a close, it was estimated that for every sixteen people who were currently living somewhere in the United States, at least one had had their identity stolen over the course of the past year. Today, at the tale end of the year of 2018, your odds are not all that better and your chances of having your identity stolen sit above at about a one in thirty three chance – though credit must be given where credit is due, and any improvement is an improvement worth noting.

And though the emotional toll of identity theft is certainly great, the financial cost of such a crime is a staggering one. For instance, identity theft on a corporate level will cost businesses and corporations all throughout the country more than forty five billion dollars over the course of just one year. And as the crime of identity theft is considered to be one of the fastest growing crimes in the entire country, the amount of money that is lost is unfortunately only likely to keep increasing unless something is done.

But identity theft doesn’t happen in the way that you think it would in many cases. Because while cyber crime is certainly a threat – and a growing one at that -, the vast majority of all data breaches that result in identity theft result in it because of the use of paper documents. In fact, the data more than backs this fact up, showing that up to ninety percent of all identity thefts occur because of them.

Fortunately, however, the use of a professional shredding service to purge documents and get rid of documents can help to prevent identity theft. Because you can’t just get rid of documents in any old way – not if you are looking to lower the risk of identity theft. If you get rid of documents with key and crucial information still easily legible on them, you open the door for such crimes as identity theft. If you get rid of documents on which such evidence has been destroyed, the risk of this is lowered considerably, if not completely.

If you are looking to get rid of documents, local shredding companies can help to make your desire to get rid of documents into a reality. In many cases for those who want to get rid of documents, you will need to schedule your document shredding ahead of time. And taking the time to schedule your shredding services in advance can add even more security to the endeavor.