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February 29, 2024 4 mins
Hillsborough County is offering residents a chance to shred documents and destroy hard drives that could be a goldmine to identity thieves. Gordon Byrd speaks with the county's Eric Olsen about Shredest, happening Saturday (March 2nd) from 9 to 11 a.m.
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(00:00):
Gordon Bird here Beyond the News.You know about the requirement or the recommendation
to shred dur old documents so thatthey don't become fodder for identity thieves,
and now you're being urged to destroyyour old electronics as well. If you
live in Hillsborough County you'll have thechance to do both. On Saturday morning.
Eric Olsen is with Hillsborough County Consumerand Veterans' Services and he's going to

(00:23):
tell us about Shredfest twenty twenty four. Eric Olson, thank you and welcome
to Beyond the News. Thank you, Gordon. I'm glad to be here
today. This is Shredfest coming upon Saturday, March second, from nine
to eleven. It's at the VeteransMemorial Park at thirty six two US three
oh one North in Tampa. Ourmain department headquarters is there and this is

(00:47):
our eighth annual event that we're doinghere with Shredfest, getting the word out
about the importance of managing your data. And yeah, it's on your digital
drives, it's on electronics, butit's also the old paperwork that you may
not need anymore. And that's happeningfrom nine to eleven as I understand,
Saturday morning at Veterans Memorial Park,which is on three oh one, and

(01:11):
I believe correct me if that's wrong. That's kind of between MLK and State
Road sixty in that area. Yesit is, Yeah, it's just south
of the fairgrounds there on three ohone. So what can you bring to
be shredded here? As you mentioned, documents, electronics, just about anything

(01:33):
that might be usable for identity thieves. That's right. We've got only a
few restrictions. We're asking residents tobring up to three copy sized boxes or
kitchen sized trash bags, and ifthey have trash bags, it's better to
have them in clear bags if theycan, it doesn't really matter, but

(01:55):
we're looking for that kind of limit. We don't support commercials shredding, so
that's not permitted. And then youknow, we're looking for any sorts of
old financial bank record documents. Youwant to get rid of anything that you
don't need any more, that mayhave personal or financial information, And of
course we do offer e shredding.Electronic devices like desktops, laptops, anything

(02:19):
with a hard drive that might retaindata is what you would be interested.
We'd be receiving to shred there atour event. Now, what is e
shredding and why do we need todo it? Great question. So more
and more the electronic shredding is becomingmore valuable to destroy the information that we

(02:43):
have that's out there that people whomight commit identity theft could get a hold
of. In years past, itwas only documents, but more and more
and increasingly, less and less peopleare using paper documents. More and more
people are using the digital side ofthings. So if someone gets a hold
of this information and it can besometimes through phishing or other attempts, people

(03:08):
might try to access your information online. We try to educate people about that.
But when you're getting rid of thedevices that you have, you don't
want to send them to a thriftstore or something like that where someone might
be able to get a hold ofit and then access your personal or financial

(03:29):
information. The device should be destroyed. Now. This is all part of
National Consumer Protection Week, which isMarch third through the ninth. If you
have any other activities that you haveplanned for that week, please tell us
about them. Well. We tryto get connected with any sort of event
that we can. There are eventsgoing on all over and I would urge

(03:52):
people to check the Hillsborough County calendarfor up to date information. This event,
or Shredfest, is our initial eventthat we are kicking off the National
Consumer Protection Week. As you mentioned, that's a whole week of education and

(04:13):
helping consumers understand what they need todo to protect themselves as much as they
can, because prevention is a muchbetter type of action to take than trying
to correct something get money back afteryou've become a victim. So we really
want to educate consumers and help themunderstand things like identity theft and ways that
it can occur. And once againthat's happening at Veterans Memorial Park on US

(04:38):
three oh one. It's between nineand eleven this coming Saturday morning. Eric
Olsen with Hillsborough County, thank youvery much for joining us on Beyond the
News. I'm very glad to behere. Hope to see you all out
at our event and have a greatday.
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