What documents should you shred to prevent identity theft

Which documents should you shred without a second thought

Shred anything that pairs your identity with a number the moment you no longer need the paper copy, receipts, boarding passes, and pay stubs included.

Shopping for a specific model? See the best paper shredder we tested — 10 models compared on the specs that decide it.

So, which documents should you shred first? Start with anything crossing your desk that links your name to a number: ATM receipts, boarding passes, and old shipping labels with your address printed in full. None of these feel dangerous on their own, but stacked together they hand a stranger enough to guess a password reset question or open a store credit line.

Do I need to shred receipts? Most of them aren't worth the trip to the shredder. A coffee shop receipt with no card number printed is fine in the recycling. But anything showing the last four digits of a card, a loyalty account number, or a signature is worth the extra ten seconds. Retailers increasingly truncate card numbers on printed receipts, but older machines and some small businesses still print the full string.

Should I shred junk mail? Yes, most of it. What papers should I shred from that pile specifically: preapproved credit and loan offers, checks mailed by lenders you never asked for, and anything with a barcode tied to your address. Convenience checks are a favorite target here, since a stolen one can be cashed with a forged signature and no other verification.

The financial statements that thieves want most

Bank and credit card statements, canceled checks, and preapproved credit offers carry enough detail to open new accounts in your name, which is why they top most identity-theft prevention lists.

Bank statements and canceled checks are the ones people forget about because they arrive so routinely. Each one lists your account number, your signature, and often a partial routing number: three of the four things a scammer needs to attempt a fraudulent transfer. Once a statement has served its purpose and you've reconciled it against your own records, it has no reason to sit in a drawer.

Credit card statements deserve the same treatment, especially ones older than a year that you're keeping purely out of habit. Voided checks and deposit slips fall into this category too, since they're printed with your account and routing numbers even though nothing was ever deposited or cashed.

Households that generate a full folder of statements every month, especially anyone running a small business out of a home office, tend to outgrow a basic desktop shredder fast. Our roundup of the best paper shredders compares higher-capacity machines built for that kind of volume, rather than the occasional stray envelope.

Medical, insurance and workplace paperwork that carries your identity

Medical bills, insurance explanation-of-benefits forms, pay stubs, and old resumes all carry policy numbers, Social Security numbers, or salary figures, enough detail to enable medical or employment-related identity theft.

Medical identity theft gets less attention than financial fraud, but it's arguably messier to untangle: a stranger using your insurance information can leave false diagnoses or treatments mixed into your actual medical record. Explanation-of-benefits statements, prescription labels with your name and prescriber information, and old insurance cards are all worth shredding once a claim has closed and you've matched it against your insurer's records.

Pay stubs are an easy one to overlook. They list your employer, your salary, and often the last four digits of your Social Security number for tax withholding purposes. Keep them until your W-2 arrives and the numbers match, then let them go. The same logic applies to old resumes, whether they're yours or ones you collected while hiring. A resume is basically a public-facing dossier of someone's address, phone number, and work history, which is exactly what a scammer needs to impersonate them convincingly on a phone call.

If your household only produces a handful of these documents a week, you don't need an industrial machine to keep up. Our home paper shredder guide focuses on compact units sized for that lighter, occasional workload instead of the higher-volume machines built for offices.

How long should you keep documents before shredding them

The IRS generally wants three years of supporting tax records kept, six if you underreported income by more than a quarter, and four years for employment tax records; after that, shredding is safe.

Which documents should you shred versus which ones you should keep often comes down to timing, not the content itself. How long should you keep documents before shredding them depends heavily on what kind of document it is. For tax paperwork, the Internal Revenue Service's general guidance is straightforward: keep records supporting a tax return for three years from the date you filed, since that's the standard window the IRS has to assess additional tax. If you failed to report income worth more than 25 percent of the gross income shown on a return, that window stretches to six years.

A few situations run longer still. Claims for a refund tied to a bad debt deduction or a loss on worthless securities get a seven-year window, and if you have employees, the IRS wants employment tax records kept for at least four years after the tax was due or paid, whichever is later. Filed a return you know was inaccurate, or never filed one at all? There's no time limit on how long the IRS can look back in those cases.

Non-tax paperwork follows looser but still useful rules of thumb. Pay stubs can go once your annual W-2 confirms the numbers. Utility bills and receipts for anything under warranty are worth holding until the coverage period ends. Insurance policies and claim paperwork are safest kept until a policy lapses and any related claim is fully closed, since insurers sometimes ask for that history years later.

What your shredder can and can't chew through

A standard cross-cut shredder handles paper, most staples, and increasingly credit cards, but cardboard, fabric, and thick plastic are better left to specialty tools or a heavier-duty machine.

Can paper shredders shred staples? Most home and small-office models handle an occasional stray staple without complaint, since the cutting cylinders are metal and built to take some abuse. Paper clips are usually fine too. What trips up a basic machine is a dense cluster of staples in a stapled report, or a binder clip that gets fed in by accident.

Can a paper shredder shred credit cards? Many current models are rated for it, often through a dedicated slot separate from the main paper feed, since plastic cuts differently than paper and can dull standard blades faster if it goes through the same opening repeatedly. Can a paper shredder shred cardboard, or is that asking too much? For most consumer units, occasional thin cardboard is fine, but a stack of shipping boxes will overheat a machine built for office paper. Cardboard shredding at any real volume is a job for heavy-duty or industrial-rated equipment, not a desktop unit.

Fabric and soft plastic are where shredders generally struggle regardless of price. Can a paper shredder shred fabric? Only in the loosest sense: thin material tends to stretch and wrap around the cutting rollers instead of being cut cleanly, which can jam the mechanism or strain the motor. Can a paper shredder shred plastic, like a grocery bag or a sheet of film? Not reliably. It isn't built to grip something that flexible, and the attempt is more likely to end in a jam than a clean shred.

If your paper shredder won't shred at all, the usual culprits are simpler than a mechanical fault: the sheet capacity has been exceeded, the machine has hit its thermal cutoff after a long run and needs to cool down, or the reverse function has engaged after sensing a jam. Cross-cut and micro-cut mechanisms also wear down faster than strip-cut ones and benefit from the shredder oil most manufacturers recommend. Our paper shredder buying guide breaks down which cutting styles handle which materials, useful if you're shopping for one that matches your household's actual mix of paper, cards, and the occasional staple.

Shredder safety and where to put it

The Consumer Product Safety Commission has linked home shredder finger injuries mostly to children under five, so placement, unplugging between uses, and keeping the machine out of easy reach matter as much as its cutting specs.

The Consumer Product Safety Commission's paper shredder safety alert is blunt about who gets hurt: reported finger injuries, including lacerations and amputations, typically involve children under the age of five, and the agency notes these incidents are especially tied to shredders manufactured before 2007, before feed-opening designs improved. A child doesn't need to be left alone with a shredder to get hurt, either. The CPSC notes that injuries can occur even when an adult is supervising a child, since the pull force at the feed opening can draw a finger in before anyone reacts.

The agency's recommendations are simple enough to actually follow: never let a child operate a shredder even with supervision, keep the unit somewhere a child can't reach it, and unplug the cord when it's not actively in use. Loose sleeves, ties, and long hair are worth keeping clear of the feed opening too, for the same pull-force reason. None of this requires a special model. It's mostly about where the machine lives and whether it's plugged in when nobody's using it.

Placement matters more than people assume. A shredder tucked under a desk in a room that doubles as a play space during the day undoes most of the benefit of unplugging it between uses, since the cord tends to stay in the outlet until the next work session anyway. A closet shelf, a locked drawer, or anywhere a toddler can't climb to beats leaving the machine on the floor within easy reach.