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PETROLEUM DIRECTORY: AK Confidential — turning private data into corporate confetti Shred Alaska protects your name and reputation and builds a name and reputation of its own Mara Severin PNA Contributing Writer
Few people and fewer businesses have never suffered a loss through the dishonesty of others. To protect ourselves we screen our employees, put alarms on our doors, keep assets in safes, and insure our valuables. These measures are effective, but only if you’re protecting cash, computers, equipment, and other tangible assets. How, then, does one protect that which is intangible? How do we protect the things most valuable to us — our credit, our reputation, our very identities? Information about ourselves — irreplaceable and invaluable — is fast becoming one of the most attractive targets of theft. With information being gathered and transmitted over the internet, even the most careful among us lay vulnerable to exploitation, that which is most difficult to protect.
These kinds of losses cannot be insured against, but they can be prevented, and this is where Shred Alaska comes in. Founded by Cindy Hinkle over a year ago, Shred Alaska is a living example of the maxim about necessity being the mother of invention. An employee of an income tax service, Cindy was given the job of finding a company that would safely destroy the bulk of confidential records that such a company generates. She was surprised to find a shortage of companies offering a service that is essential to so many industries. “There wasn’t much to choose from,” she says, “and the few options available were less than convenient.”
Most shredding services, says Hinkle, require that their customers box up the material and call for a pickup, for which the customer is charged a pickup fee, plus the charge for shredding. “They even keep the boxes,” says Cindy. The inconvenience inherent in having materials shredded, she realized, was leading some employees to get careless. “People would just throw sensitive papers out rather than have to sort the stuff and box up the paper,” she says.
And on the seventh day… he was still driving It was a thought-provoking discovery made at a fortuitous time. Cindy’s husband Larry had just retired and was looking for a new avenue into which to put his energies. Larry took over the research that his wife began. His long history in Alaska, his “excellent memory” and “gregarious personality” according to his wife, made him the perfect candidate to help take a new business off the ground. “He is excellent at making contacts,” she says.
Research led to the purchase of the first shredding truck. “We cashed out our retirements and made a big investment,” says Cindy. They bought the truck on their own, “because nobody would give us a loan,” she says with a smile. Larry brought some other skills to bear when he drove the truck from Ontario Canada in the dead of winter. A credit to him as a driver, perhaps, but he credits the truck. Things have changed since Larry made this somewhat lonely seven day trip. Business has grown. Recently, they purchased a new, state-of-the-art shredding truck.
Dumpster-diving — recycling or low-tech espionage? Growth seems inevitable for the Hinkle’s industry. Paper shredding does not immediately seem like the stuff of headlines. However, with the widespread use of shared information on the internet, and computer databases that can trap and share huge quantities of the personal information of anyone who has ever been on a mailing list, identity theft is reaching epidemic proportions.
The statistics are alarming. In March of last year, the United States General Accounting Office (USGAO) published a Report to Congressional Requesters entitled, “Identity Theft: Prevalence and Cost Appear to be growing.” In it, researchers report that one consumer reporting agency estimated that identity theft increased 36 percent over two recent years. A second agency reported an increase of 53 percent. Other statistics are equally alarming. From its establishment in November 1999 through September 2001, FTC’s Identity Theft Data Clearinghouse received a total of 94,1000 complaints from victims. In the first month of operation, the Clearinghouse answered an average of 445 calls per week. By March 2001, the average number of calls had increased to over 2,000 per week. In December 2001, the weekly average was about 3,000 calls.
Making use of other people’s trash is such a phenomenon that it has spawned a new phrase. “Dumpster-divers” can describe enterprising and environmentally conscious individuals who strive to prevent waste and are willing to get themselves dirty in the name of recycling. The phrase can also describe something far more sinister. Amongst dumpster-divers are those who want to profit from the information that is contained within a person’s garbage. This may not sound that alarming, says Larry, until one considers the kinds of materials that businesses and households routinely throw out. These include bank statements complete with account numbers and balances, insurance materials that make use of social security numbers, even personal checks that credit card companies send to their clients to encourage them to use their credit. These envelopes are often thrown out before they are even opened and the possible havoc that the unethical can wreak is limitless.
Undoing the damage done is a lesson in frustration. And the cost goes beyond money. Time, emotion, and temporarily marred credit cannot be compensated for. The USGAO report cites cases of victims who were denied credit after having personal information stolen, others were harassed by debt collectors for debts they did not incur, others reported being denied employment when security checks red-flagged them for activities in which they were not alarmed. Even more alarming were the rare cases of men who were arrested after their names were used in connection with traffic violations, and far worse, drug purchases.
An ounce of prevention Comparing the cost of identity theft with the cost of document shredding is enlightening and simple. Shred Alaska charges 28 cents a pound with a minimum charge of $40 or if the client wants to set up a monthly pick-up, Shred Alaska will provide a container for the convenience of their client.
It’s economical, says Cindy, and it’s simple. “Just call 929-1154,” she says. “We’ll fax you our price sheet, you can make a decision about how often you want us to come or if you only want us for a one-shot deal.” The company then comes right to you. “You don’t have to do anything,” says Cindy. “Boxes or stacks, we can do it, and we give you back the boxes. You can leave in the paper clips and staples. We can even do 3-ring binders.” The material gets put into our containers, taken to the truck and shredded on site. “Nobody ever touches the material,” she says.
Shred Alaska, as one might expect, serves the health industry, the legal profession, the medical profession, and the financial services industry. But every business can benefit from their services, says Cindy. “Everyone has employee records,” she says, “so everyone has material that can be exploited by the unscrupulous.”
Leaving nothing to the imagination With a truck that completes the job before it ever leaves their clients’ parking lot or driveway, Shred Alaska’s services are virtually foolproof say the Hinkle’s. And in case you’re the type of person who has to see to believe, the truck even has a window where clients can watch their material being shredded. And unlike the shredded material seen thrown at ticker tape parades, this machine cuts the paper up into miniscule, and non-uniform pieces — it is, says Hinkle impossible to reassemble.
So, without going anywhere, the truck takes your material on a short journey from incendiary, potentially dangerous or damaging and vulnerable information, to oblivion. Then the shredded material is taken to the recycle center.
Ultimately, says Larry, his customers will determine their growth. “We are all about customer service,” he says. “We want to provide the best identity protection available.” It must be working. Larry says that a great deal of their business is word of mouth. Customer satisfaction is “information about the Hinkles” that both Cindy and Larry Hinkle are glad to see spread around.
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