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Welcome to this week's edition of the Computer Kindergarten Newsletter.
Today is Sunday, October 19, 2008
In this Issue:
Special Feature: Shredding: A Key Weapon in Your Document Security and Identity Theft Prevention Strategies
Tips & Tricks: Password Protect a File
This Week's Topic: Backing Up to a USB Drive
Question: Keyboard Shortcut for your Favorite Program
Websites of Interest: United Nations Day; Gas Prices; RetailMeNot; Text Message Reminders
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Special Feature: Shredding: A Key Weapon in Your Document Security and Identity Theft Prevention Strategies
The following is from scambusters.org
Shredding old and unwanted documents has become a vital part of protecting yourself from data and identity theft.
Gone are the days -- if we ever truly had them -- when you could just hurl letters and old records in the trash, confident no one would ever look at them again. Today, anything that gives personal information about you and your finances can become the basic raw material for crime.
Hunting through garbage is part of the job for scammers and identity thieves. Total destruction is your main defense... and shredding is your key weapon.
But what do you do when you have decades worth of documents, so many in fact that they seem ready to take over the house? Where and how do you start?
That's the challenge Scambusters' Audri Lanford faced when she recently visited her mother in New York, to help her wade through a lifetime of documents and other records, deciding what to keep and what needed shredding.
It took four days, and was an interesting experience in which Audri did the research, devised a simple system, gained valuable insights and identified tips to use if and when you face this daunting task.
So we decided to create this Special Issue of Scambusters with a shredding article built around Audri's experience.
First though, a quick caveat: We are not experts in document retention, and are not providing any financial, investing, accounting or legal advice. We are simply focused on helping you protect yourself from identity theft via shredding, and telling you our story of what Audri did -- with the hope that it can help you with the process.
Audri's mother had two closets and a four-drawer cabinet, each full to overflowing with old documents. Sorting them out raised five questions:
What do you keep?
What do you do with the stuff you don't want?
What's the best method for going through it all?
How do you organize what's left -- the stuff you want to keep?
How do you do the shredding itself?
1. What to keep
I Googled terms like "document retention" and "document destruction" linked with the term "New York" and to find the state requirements and guidelines to help us determine what to keep and what to toss. I also looked for federal requirements.
I recommend you do the same thing for your state. It's best if the document is from a reputable source, like a state agency. Then, print it out and keep a copy so you have a reference for what you're keeping and what you're throwing out.
Using this process, I devised four groups of documents:
(1) Those we needed to keep forever -- like tax returns, important personal memories and photographs you want to keep, important medical information, and broker statements covering long-standing investments and real estate. You need to make your own decisions for this category.
(2) Those needed for IRS purposes. Their normal audit period is the previous three years, but they can, in some cases, go back six years (and even longer if there is fraud). Since fraud was not an issue, my mother decided to go with six years, but then decided she felt more comfortable with an additional year -- for a total of 7 years' worth of documentation.
(3) Current year items -- documents relating to this year should be kept separately so they are quick and easy to access... plus you'll need them for this year's tax return.
(4) The remainder to be disposed of -- the shredding fodder!
A footnote on the tax documents: When I checked, New York state requirements were the same as those of the IRS, which made it straightforward for us. However, individual states may vary so check out yours before deciding what period to cover in your storage.
Of course, if you're in business, again the requirements will be different. My project was just for an individual -- my mother.
2. The stuff you don't want
Well, yes, as I said, you must destroy it. But, with a personal shredder that can handle only a few sheets at a time, my mother would have had to spend the rest of her life shredding. We had boxes and boxes and boxes!
So we tracked down a company that comes to your residence (they also do businesses) and will let you watch while they do the shredding. Now, you may think that sort of service would only be available because we were in New York City but, as it turns out, here in Boone, North Carolina, where we live (and which is obviously far from New York in terms of size), there's a company that comes once a month and will do the same thing. In smaller towns, there are also companies where you can take your documents for shredding rather than them coming to you.
There are many companies that do shredding in New York. The company we used charged $210 for an hour and they could shred up to 80 boxes' worth in that time. We felt this was a great investment considering the alternative!
3. Sorting it out
This was the most time-consuming step and physically the most challenging. We started with the oldest stuff first, and this went fairly fast. Basically, anything that didn't fit into one of the first three categories went into a box for shredding. When one box was filled, we started another.
Unfortunately, we actually needed to open and at least quickly check the contents of pretty much every file so we could be sure about what we were getting rid of. For the very old years, we placed the documents we needed to keep, like tax returns, in a separate pile for each year.
The current year went more slowly, of course, because these were live documents and we were keeping a lot more of them. For the old documents, we were able to go through a box in about 10 or 15 minutes. The past seven years took more time than the really old years, but less than the current year. Again, we sorted into piles by year.
We eventually got through an enormous mound of stuff and ended up with 20 big boxes that could go for shredding.
4. Organizing what's left
As I mentioned, we had the remaining documents, the ones we wanted to keep, in a separate pile for each year. I put everything my mother needed to keep forever into two boxes, sorted by year, and placed them in the bottom of her closet because she really didn't need to do anything more with them.
Then I took the seven-year stuff and we sorted that, again by year, and placed the documents in two more boxes. Then there was a box of miscellaneous stuff -- so five boxes of old documents in total. And, of course, all the current items went into the filing cabinet for easy access.
All the rest was for shredding. So we wound up with half of her two closets and half of her filing cabinet being empty, which was absolutely thrilling!
5. The shredding
The shredding company arrived on schedule and came in with two big containers -- like sturdy garbage cans on wheels. They came up to my mother's apartment and took all twenty boxes and just emptied them in these containers while we watched.
Then we were invited to see the actual shredding, which was done in their truck. They even have video cameras showing what's happening so you can be absolutely sure your documents are destroyed. The whole thing, from the time they rang the door bell to when we were done and they gave me the receipt and certificate of dissolution, took 20 minutes -- for 20 big boxes.
So, that's how Audri and her mother dealt with this key issue of document retention and destruction -- and gained a whole lot more space in the process! Their approach shows that if you know what you want to keep, have a method for sorting and organizing, and have a professional to look after the shredding, it's a cinch!
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Tips & Tricks: Password Protect a File
Question: Can I put a password on a Word file? I share my computer and there are some things I would like to keep private. Thank you very much.
Answer:
You can set up a Word file to ask you for a password when you try to open it. Here are the steps:
Open the file. Click Tools on the menu and then Option. Click the Security tab at the top.
Click in the box to the immediate right of the words Password to Open. You will see the insertion point flashing in there. Type in the password you would like to use.
Click the OK button and you are done.
Now, when you open that file, a small box will open first asking you to input the password.
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Today's Topic: Backing Up to a USB Drive
First, make sure you have a drive that is large enough to store all the files that you want to back up. Visit our newsletter archives for our article Backing Up Your Files:
http://computerkindergarten.com/html/100508.html
Backing Up
Insert the flash drive into a USB port on your computer. If this is the first time you have put the drive in your computer, it will take a moment or two for the computer to find it and get ready to use it. Once it is ready, a window should appear asking you what you want to do with the drive. Click on Open Folder to View Files. A window will open for this drive. (On some computers, a window will automatically open)
Move the flash drive window over to the side of the screen.
Open the folder that contains the files you want to backup. Move that folder to the other side of the screen so that the two folders are next to each other. The easiest way to do this is to right click on a blank spot on the taskbar (the bar at the bottom of the screen) and from the menu that you now see, click on Tile Windows Vertically or Show Windows Side by Side (depending on your version of Windows).
Click on any file in the My Documents window. It will now be selected. To select all the files, click Edit on the menu and then click Select All. You will see that every file is now highlighted. Point to any file, press and hold down the left mouse button, and drag the file into the flash drive window. You will see that all the files come along. A window will appear showing a progress bar. Once it completes, all the files will now be copied on your flash drive.
Flash drives must be stopped before they can be removed from the computer. In the system tray (bottom right, but the clock), there will be a small green icon with a checkmark. Click on it and then follow the prompts to stop the drive. Windows will display a message when it is safe to remove the drive.
To learn more about Flash Drives, take a look at our article USB Flash Drives:
http://www.computerkindergarten.com/html/092307.html
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Question: Keyboard Shortcut for your Favorite Program
I have an icon on my desktop for Microsoft Word, which I am in and out of all the time. The problem is, if I have another program open, it is inconvenient to get to the desktop icon. Can I set up keys to open Word?
Answer:
Yes. You can create a keyboard shortcut. This will enable you to press a combination of keys on the keyboard to quickly open any program you want. This is convenient since you will not have to minimize an open window to get to your desktop icons, or maneuver your way through the start menu.
Let’s use Microsoft Word as an example.
If you have an icon for Word on your desktop, right click on it and then left click on Properties from the resulting menu.
In the Properties dialog box that you now see, click the Shortcut tab at the top. About halfway down, you will see Shortcut key. Click in that box. Press the keys that you would like to assign as the keyboard shortcut for opening Word.
Note: Since there are already so many shortcut keys preprogrammed in Windows, you may have to use two modifier keys and a letter key for your shortcut. The modifier keys are the Shift, Alt, and Ctrl keys.
For our example, we are going to assign a combination of the Ctrl, Shift and W keys. Press and hold the Ctrl, press and hold the Shift and then press the W key. You will see the names of these keys appear in the box as you press them. When you are done, release the keys and click the OK button.
If you do not have an icon for Word on the desktop, open the Start menu and find the program in there. Right click on Microsoft Word in the menu and then left click on Properties. Follow the steps above to create a keyboard shortcut.
Now, to open the program, hold down the modifier keys (Ctrl and Shift used in our example), and then press the letter key you choose).
Note: We used Microsoft Word for our example; you can create a keyboard shortcut for any program using the steps above.
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Websites of Interest:
United Nations Day
Wednesday, October 24 is the anniversary of the United Nations Charter. Learn more about the United Nations at this website.
http://www.un.org/events/unday/2007/
Gas Prices
For those living on Long Island, visit this website to find the lowest gas prices.
http://www.longislandgasprices.com/
RetailMeNot
Get current discount coupons and codes for thousands of web merchants and services.
http://www.retailmenot.com/
Text Message Reminders
At this site, you can set up future reminders to be sent as text messages to your cell phone.
http://www.ohdontforget.com/ |
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