If you work in a business that deals in highly sensitive information, confidential shredding is massively important. In the security services confidential shredding is pretty much a rule, sensitive government and national information must be disposed of properly, meaning confidential shredding is pretty much all the shredding that happens there. While a lot of documents and data are stored on computers and hard drives, this information is kept under firewalls, passwords, and encryption, whereas paper files can more easily be found, which is why confidential shredding is drastically important for keeping the secrets that need to be kept hidden from plain view. If you work in a bank or another business that deals highly in customer information such as credit cards, phone numbers, and addresses, confidential shredding is a requirement set out by law. The data protection act and other such laws mean that confidential shredding must be done with any and all customer information when appropriate, it simply cannot just be thrown out or left in a normal bin as it could be easily found or exploited by criminals looking to commit fraud or damage. Most of the confidential shredding is taken over by external agencies because of the mass volumes of confidential shredding that has to be done, but they still comply with data protection laws.
Personal confidential shredding is another thing that exists. If you want to make sure your accounting records or personal letters are kept private, confidential shredding is the best way to destroy them without resorting to other methods such as burning, which isn’t particularly clean or good for the environment. On average confidential shredding is often done more in business and government entities, and for a very good reason, but the average person often neglects their confidential shredding of personal documents and as a result they are liable to be misused should they fall into the wrong hands. The amount of fraud committed simply because these private documents ended up with a criminal is beyond counting, and more people must be responsible with their documents and use confidential shredding in order to ensure that they are never subject to that kind of fraud.