Complete Shredding Solutions

Shredding Horror Story: Stolen Identities

Bobby listened as John explained that his company’s system had been hacked and that a ton of client information was stolen.  He stayed silent as John told him that their accounts were almost wiped out and endlessly apologized that this had happened. Bobby felt waves of emotion— anger, frustration, sadness — rush through him, but he couldn’t form words to express his reaction.

“John, I’ll — wow — I’ll call you back,” you finally managed to say. Hung up the phone and stared at the floor in disbelief. His wife, Julie, walked into the kitchen and noticed him standing there.

“Hey, babe. Who was on the phone?” She shuffled through some mail on the counter.

“That was John from XYZ.”

“Oh, what’d he say?”

“He told me the company got hacked.”

Julie stopped going through the mail and looked up, eyes wide. “What do you mean ‘hacked’?”

“Someone got into their system and stole a lot of money from a bunch of accounts — including ours.”

Julie felt her heart pounding in her chest. “How did they do that? How much did they take? I mean, did they —”

“We’ve got a couple thousand dollars left in the account.” The words burned as they came out of his mouth.  

“A couple thousand?! We had 20 years of saving in that account — Our retirement, the kids’ college funds. How -” Julie started sobbing into her hands. The thought of their entire life savings being stolen was too much to handle. Bobby hugged her, still unable to fathom what was happening. “How did this happen?”

“John said the people probably got our information off of our statements and stole our identities to withdraw the money.”

“But how? Don’t they shred that stuff? There isn’t a way to see that kind of information if the statements were shredded, right?”

Something clicked in Bobby’s head. “You right. They probably didn’t shred them. They lost our money because they didn’t protect our information the right way.” He walked back over to the phone.

“What’re you doing?” Julie asked through tears.

“I’m calling John back.” Bobby finally knew how to feel about the situation. He felt furious.

To hear what happens next in our shredding horror story, be sure to follow Complete Shredding Solutions on Facebook and Twitter.

Complete Shredding Solutions offers safe and secure paper shredding services, so you can sleep soundly knowing your personal information is safe. For more information or to schedule paper shredding services on Long Island, in NYC, and New Jersey, call us at 516-442-1624.

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