Government Burn Bags and Proper Document Disposal

You may wonder why The Gear Bunker (a gear website) is talking about government burn bags and how to properly dispose of sensitive documentation. Part of our site covers Lifestyle content and within that subject is personal protection.

Yes, there is some sexy gear wrapped around personal protection, some of which we have covered. The other side of that coin is managing your identity by properly disposing of sensitive documentation. By utilizing a proper shredder and burn bag protocol, you can effectively destroy documentation that an identity thief could otherwise use against you. Plus, it is kinda cool to have official Government Burn Bags. They make for an interesting conversation starter.

Personally Identifiable Information

To start, we need to identify what sensitive documentation is and why it needs to be properly destroyed (not just thrown into a recycle bin). Personally Identifiable Information, otherwise known as PII, if in the wrong hands, could identify a particular person. Examples of this include any documentation with the following or a combination of 2 or more.

• Anything with your full name (first and last)
• Social Security number
• Driver’s License number
• Financial information (bank account statements, deposit slips, retirement account statements)
• Other Account numbers (monthly bills and statements)
• Store receipts
• Passport number
• Email address
• Anything with your signature on it
• Medical or legal documents

Chances are that your physical mailbox contains many the above on any given day of the week which is why you must get your mail and not let it sit overnight. A mailbox and trashcan packed with mail and documents is a gold mine for identity thieves. Over time, enough of that information collected could lead to a full attack on your identity. It could even lead to someone knowing where you work, where you shop, where your kids go to school and what other stores or services you hold accounts at. In the military, we refer to this as building a Target Package. Essentially, that is what identity thieves do; collect intel (your paper trash), build target packages (analyze the collected information) and execute on that information acting as you.

Break the habit of tossing unopened mail, even if you know it’s junk. The document inside could contain enough information to do harm to you and your family. Tearing a document into several pieces isn’t enough. Even machine-shredded paper can be pieced back together by hand or via computer programs nowadays. With all that said, let’s look at properly disposing of your sensitive documentation in order to mitigate being a victim of identity theft or even physical harm.

Document Shredding

The most common way people dispose of documents, other than just throwing them into the recycle bin, is using a shredder. There are many shredders to choose from and the options can get confusing. Before we cover what shredders to use and what to look for, you need to understand the different levels of shredding.

• Security Level P1 (shredding general internal documents): Strip-Cut — 3/8" or Cross-Cut — between 3/8" x 1–1/2" and 3/8" x 3–1/8"
• Security Level P2 (shredding sensitive documents): Strip-Cut — 1/8" or 1/4″
• Security Level P3 (shredding confidential documents): Strip-Cut — 1/16″ or Cross-Cut — 1/4" x 1/8"
• Security Level P4 (shredding confidential documents): Cross-Cut — 1/16 x 5/8″
• Security Level P5 (shredding of secret documents): Cross-Cut — 1/32" x 1/2"
• Security Level P6 (shredding of top-secret documents — DOD/NSA approved): Cross-Cut 1mm x 5mm (approx. 1/26″ x 1/5″)

Keeping these security levels in mind, when purchasing a shredder, you want to find one that shreds at a security level P3 or higher. Security level P3 is acceptable for all your PII information that we talked about above.

There are some shredders you want to stay away from, namely strip shredders. As the name implies, these shredders only shred in long strips, making reconstruction fairly easy, especially with the technology available to do so. Because of that, cross-cut shredders are what you need to be looking for. A level P3 or P4 is going to make it hell for a would-be identity thief to reconstruct your documents. But, we’re going to take it a step further and eliminate that possibility. Once all the documents are shredded at an acceptable security level, we’re going to incinerate them.

Document Burning

Document burning is not a new thing, but it needs to be done properly in order to be effective. Just setting a pile of papers on fire might burn the outer few pages, but all the internal documents will more or less be insulated from the burn. By shredding first we allow the fire to breathe and maintain its burn consistency as it incinerates ALL the shredded document pieces. Since we are still dealing with sensitive documentation even after it has been shredded, we need to properly store the shredded pieces until we burn them. The best and coolest way I have found for this is using the official Government Burn Bags.

Once you have run all your documents through the shredder, I recommend dumping those into either a Government Burn Bag or standard paper grocery bag. The Government Burn Bags are nice because they are easily identifiable which reduces the chances of your shredded documentation being confused as regular trash. Once you are ready to burn, you simply toss the bag with its contents into a fire and watch it all be incinerated.

Identity theft isn’t just online data, there are still those seeking to find and build a physical paper trail of your life in order to commit criminal acts. Using the above recommendations will mitigate the threat of physical identity theft.

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Originally published at https://www.thegearbunker.com on January 5, 2020.