Identity Theft has become an increasingly serious problem. The simplest, and most effective way to protect yourself, is to ensure that all documents that contain your personal information are destroyed. Discarding in the trash is not safe. Please refer to the following site for further information.

Federal Trade Commission - Your National Resource for ID Theft
http://www.consumer.gov/idtheft/
http://www.usdoj.gov/criminal/fraud/idtheft.html

In addition to document security, we recommend that you consider home and office computer protection from destructive pests like trojans, spyware, adware and hacker tools. This software complements your anti-virus and firewall software, extending your protection against non-viral malicious software that can evade your existing security and invade your personal privacy.

We recommend Ad-Aware, a free, downloadable tool that removes these pests. Made by Lavasoft, the full version is  under $27.00.
We also sell a very powerful tool for protecting personal information on computers you are ready to dispose of called Boot and Nuke.  This tool overwrites all data including all elements of the operation system which is the only secure way to delete information .This software is offered free over the counter at our Berkeley location.