A paper shredder is a handy piece of equipment to own, especially if you have a lot of documents to throw away that contain sensitive material such as credit card statements, bank statements, and other financial information.  When looking to throw out pieces of paper that contain important bits of information about you it is important that you run the paper through a shredder.  This will ensure that the documents are properly destroyed so that no one is able to get their hands on your personal information and use it in a negative way.

Another type of document that you will want to run through a paper shredder is a credit card application.  You will want to run these applications that you are not going to fill out through a paper shredder so that no one else can fill out the application using your information along with their address.  This is one of the ways the people have their identities stolen and subsequently have their credit histories ruined as well.  To protect yourself from criminals trying to open up lines of credit in your name, you will want to shred any credit card application that is mailed to you that you are not going to apply for before throwing it into the trash.