late 90's, early 2000, my wife worked at a state run female inmate honor camp. Many of the occupants were in there for identity theft, mail theft, drugs of course etc. Even then they could get personal info off of magazine labels, shipping labels etc. Torn up or pasta shredded credit card applications didn't deter them. On those, they would tape them back together, submit them and have them accepted to get cards which you got to pay and fight the bogus charges with the CC company who shouldn't have even accepted the taped together form. Many, many more tales like this. Since then, we stay as vigilant as possible with our personal info. She passed this insight to some of our relatives so they could be aware. A few of them blew her off, then paid the price when they had to go through identity theft hits. Our shredder is one that does crosscut, which makes small bits of confetti. One thing she does have though which chimes in sometimes at weird moments is one of the Google assist units. That thing bugs us both, especially considering the company it came from. She likes to use it for timers, music and to ask questions some times. We don't have any smart appliances, controls etc. I'm sure some lazy whizz kid can still figure out ways in to things, but we'll make them work for it.
