Tax Season: How Long Do I Keep My Documents?

Tax season is upon us again, and that means tons of tax documents for individuals and businesses. You have to figure out which of those tax documents to keep and which ones to destroy. Throwing them in the trash, especially documents with birth dates and social security numbers on them, leaves a gold mine for identity thieves. And, if you are a business, you could face fines and may have to pay out settlements if your clients’ data gets into the wrong hands.

Shredding Keeps You Safe During Tax Season

You do have to keep tax records for some time — three to seven years. However, once the retention period expires, you should shred the returns with a document destruction company that offers secure shredding. Your tax returns have a lot of personal information that identity thieves can use to steal your identity, including your social security number, name, address, your dependents, and even your income. Secure shredding is part of data protection, as is shredding old hard drives and other digital media that contain personal information.

Why Shred with a NAID Certified Company

The National Association for Information Destruction gives NAID certification to document shredding companies who comply with data protection laws. NAID, formed in 2000, does scheduled and surprise audits on shredding companies to ensure that they are in compliance with the data protection laws. In addition to the audits, companies who wish to be NAID certified must give the organization proof of their written procedures and policies for employee training, regulatory compliance and incident response preparedness. NAID also provides access to the results of the audits.

Steps to Take While at Home

During the coronavirus pandemic, you should be sheltering in place — and are probably bored out of your mind. Spring cleaning is done and there’s not much more you can do to keep occupied other than watching TV, reading or working on hobbies. To break up the monotony, declutter your files. Now would be the perfect time for you to tackle that job, and once you go through and create a box of documents you no longer need, call Royal Document Service for no-contact mobile shredding services. Shredding anything with personal information on it significantly reduces the risk of identity theft.

COVID-19: Our New Best Business Practices for Hygiene

• Our plant manager is taking the temperatures of the entire RDD staff every morning
• Drivers are required to wear masks to all customer facilities
• Drivers are disinfecting their trucks at the end of each business day
• Drop off customers are all required to wear a mask at all times in our office
• Our office staff will put on masks when a customer or visitor enters the building
• Our staff is encouraged to wear masks, and we have provided masks to our entire staff
• We have provided disposable gloves to our employees
• Our warehouse floor has been marked with x’s for effective workspace social distancing
• All staff meetings are taking place outside in our plant so that we can maintain appropriate 6-foot distancing at all times
• The breakroom has a maximum capacity of 2 people now so that 6-foot distancing can be maintained
• The staff must use disinfectant cleaner after they eat or use the break room and disinfect anything that they touched
• Our offices are being cleaned nightly, including sanitizing all frequently touched surfaces
• Door knobs and other high touch surfaces are being cleaned multiple times throughout the day
• Hand sanitizer, disinfecting wipes, and antibacterial cleaners are located at various locations throughout our facility so that they are very convenient to use
• The shred containers are being disinfected after being emptied when they come back to our facility
• There are signs up and around the office reminding the staff to wash their hands frequently, maintain a 6-foot distance from others at all times, use good hygiene, not to touch their faces, and to stay home if sick
• Our occupancy is below the 50% allowed rate at all times.

Shred Bags: Secure Shredding For Employees Working From Home

Secure Shredding While Working From Home

When your employees are working from home because of covid19, they might have generated documents that need to be shredded. You have to rely on your employees to bring the documents into the office, but meanwhile, they sit unsecured in your employees’ homes. Instead of taking a chance that confidential information could get into the wrong hands, get your employees secure shred bags. The bags come in 6- and 12-gallon sizes. Your employees simply fill them up and seal them. When they can bring the confidential documents back, you just put the filled bags into your shred boxes or lock them up until the shred truck comes. We’ll shred the bag and its contents without unsealing the bag.

Shred Bags: No Contact Decluttering

As part of alleviating the boredom of staying home, many people are decluttering their home offices. In some cases, people are working from home because of shelter in place orders. Both types of people practicing social distancing could benefit from our no contact service. Royal Document Destruction provides Seal ‘n Shred bags that you can use for documents that have to go to the shredder. We'll send you the bags. When you fill them up, call us to arrange for a pickup. Put the bags on the front porch when you see us pull up. Or, you can hand them to us through the door. The bags come in two sizes: 6 dry-gallon bags that hold about 15 pounds and 12 dry-gallon bags that hold about 35 pounds.

How Shredding Combats COVID

According to the Healthcare Environmental Resource Center, healthcare facilities create close to two billion pounds of paper and cardboard waste every year. With the coronavirus pandemic of 2020, paper waste has significantly increased. Covid-19, which causes the coronavirus, is very infectious, which means that hospitals and doctors are seeing a dramatic increase in patients. Paper gowns, paper masks, paper on the examination tables, and even paper that wraps bandages and other supplies are being used much more because of this pandemic. Using recycled paper that has been through a sterilization process to make more of these paper products helps with protecting the environment, with alleviating the shortage of paper products, and in keeping recyclable material out of the waste stream.

Tax Season: What Documents to Shred Now

With tax season upon us, many people are not sure which tax documents they need to keep and which ones to shred now. If you are a business, you should have a retention schedule that tells you which documents to keep and which documents to shred. However, employee payroll records are often tax documents, and those should be kept for up to seven years. As an individual, you should keep most tax documents for at least three years, while you need to keep some for up to six or seven years. If you are an individual, you might need shredding services once per year, while businesses, depending on the type of business, might need our services every week.

Protecting Your Identity with Document Destruction

Most people don’t think of identity theft when they throw away junk mail. But having that one piece of information might be all they need to complete a profile on you to steal your identity. Even junk mail that has your address on it should go in the shredding bin. Our shredding services provide document destruction when you need it, whether it’s once per year or every week. Even other seemingly innocuous documents, such as your child’s report cards have identifying information and should be shredded if you don’t plan on keeping them. Like junk mail, people don't think about what is on their hard drives -- these should also be shredded to protect your information. 

The Benefits of Shredding Local

It’s no secret that protecting sensitive data is a huge concern. While there are tons of document destruction companies, having a local shredding company on your team can help save time, money, and provide an additional layer of protection to documents being destroyed. No company wants to run the risk of having internal documents and information compromised. When using a local company, you’re able to build a relationship with the owner and employees to quickly resolve any issues if they arise. You’re also able to monitor what’s going on, including utilizing on-site services if they are available. It’s much easier to run over to a company that’s in town to help solve a problem or utilize your risk management team rather than having to travel long distances. For some organizations, having a document disposal company that’s far away just won’t do.

Documents Your Ohio Business Needs to Shred Now

One of the biggest myths around is that shredding documents will keep information safe. It really depends on the type of shredding that takes place. Having documents professionally shredded will help alleviate data breaches because they use commercial shredders designed to add an additional layer of protection to the document destruction process. Many people don’t realize that hard drives need to be shredded as well. Being educated on what needs to be shredded professionally can alleviate a lot of headaches down the road.

Declutter Your Home or Office with Royal Document Destruction

No matter what the protocol is at your office, almost all businesses are guilty of letting the clutter pile up over time. Busy office managers and supervisors swear they'll get to it soon, but that day takes months to actually come around. If you're like most companies throughout the US, you likely start clearing everything out either at the very end or very beginning of the year. But ideally, you should be decluttering throughout the year rather than waiting for it to pile up — and it's not just because everyone in the office will work better when they're not distracted by clutter. If you want to stay compliant with state and local laws, you need to be getting rid of sensitive information so there are fewer chances of a security breach. 

Schedule Retention and Document Destruction

When your business receives or creates documents, you should have a list with the received date or creation date. This creates a retention schedule so you know when you can send the documents out for document destruction. In many cases, your business has to save records for seven to ten years – but holding onto documents for so long eventually causes a space issue. Instead of running out of space or having to rent a less-than-secure storage locker, creating a schedule retention list and destroying the documents that are outdated keeps your documents safer.

The Importance of Professional Hard Drive Destruction

Your old hard drive may seem irrelevant or out of date, but it likely contains data that could prove extremely damaging for your business and your valued customers. Often, hard drives include such sensitive information as Social Security Numbers, bank account routing numbers, and medical records. This data is rarely encrypted, making it shockingly easy to access for those with even modest technical skills.

The Value of Our NAID Certification

The Value of Our NAID Certification

When dealing with sensitive documents, it's important to seek assistance from only the most reliable shredding services. Without proper certification, however, it's impossible to truly know whether a particular provider is trustworthy. Hence, the value of the NAID AAA certification, which instills greater confidence in those seeking dependable shredding services. 

What Gets Stolen from Old Hard Drives

Your old hard drive is in high demand, and those that want it would rather not pay for it. About one-third of companies and individuals do not adequately wipe hard drives before discarding them, and those hard drives are like gold to identity thieves. Researchers at BT, a UK telecoms company, Longwood University in Virginia, the University of Glamorgan in Wales and the University in Perth, Australia found tons of personal information, including financial information, on used hard drives they bought at computer fairs, online and at retail outlets. Instead of taking a chance that you didn’t wipe all the sensitive information off your old hard drive, contact Royal Document Destruction for professional hard drive destruction services.

The Rise of Recycling Fees: Are You Being Nickel-and-Dimed?

When paper prices decline, shredding companies lose money because they aren’t paid as much for the
shredded paper they sell to recycling companies. This means that, often, national shredding companies
pass that cost onto you when you bring your documents in for shredding. These businesses are trying to
recover losses by charging higher recycling fees for their shredding services – as high as 20 percent for
each customer! They expertly bury the costs by giving the price increases a different name - for
instance- by increasing another 10 percent on to the 4 percent “environmental fee” they already charge.
Royal Document Destruction has a transparent fee schedule and do not nickel and dime you like other
companies do. Call or visit us for a free quote!