What Does Your Trash Reveal About You?
Garbage is the food remains from preparing meals. Trash is everything else but the two are often mixed. Trash is a gold mine to a Private Investigator or even a snoopy neighbor. Imagine what could be learned about you and your family if someone had secretly gone through your trash for the past month.
A trash-sifter watches for items on the following list:
Any items you tore up (rather than using a shredder) … They tape the pieces back together.
Credit card statements
Receipts, invoices, ATM receipts
Bank statements with your name, address, account number, and balance
Anything suggesting drug use
Telephone bills revealing your number and numbers called
Utility and other bills, showing the name and address you use for those
Paycheck or money order stubs
Empty bottles from prescription drugs, with your doctor’s name
Classified ads from newspapers, to see if anything is circled
Magazines, travel brochures, or anything that would suggest interest in weapons or strange practices
Beer, wine, and liquor containers
Personal and business letters with all address labels
Scraps of paper revealing a phone number or email address
Receipts, for evidence of alcohol, illness, condoms, birth control pills, or anything to suggest homosexual activity
What else can you think of, in your particular case?
Do you have a weekly arrangement for someone to come in and clean?
Do they have access to the trash?
If you work in an office? … Who handles the trash?
Janitors are sometimes bribed to turn trash from a specific office over to private investigators or government agents.
If you do everything else right, no one will be able to sift through your trash because nobody can find you. However, if someone does find you (perhaps by following you home), make sure all papers have been shredded and there is nothing to find in your trash.
Empty prescription bottles with the label removed, whiskey bottles, and other items that cannot be shredded are best tossed in a dumpster far away from home.