tearing up your credit card application? think again
don’t do this. shred that credit card application instead
you know all those useless credit card applications you get in the mail? you just rip them in half and throw them in the garbage right? me too. but it turns out you should be shredding them. tearing them up won’t stop identity theft as Rob Cockerham from cockeyed.com proves. he conducted an experiment. he ripped up an application into small squares, taped it back together, changed the address and sent it in to the credit card company - simulating what someone could do if they grabbed your garbage to take your identity. a few weeks later, the credit card arrived at a different address in his name. Read more on the story at cockeyed.com. This “amature prankster”, as 20/20 calls him, has some funny pranks on his site as well.
Also, watch the story on 20/20:
May 4th, 2007 at 1:41 am
Why fill it out in the first place? There’s another trick. If you don’t have a shredder (or don’t have access to one), tear it up and put half of it in the trash, keep the other half with you for the meantime and throw it couple days, or more, after. The next time you want a master card credit application perhaps, do it online.