CAA Manitoba Insurance hosted the annual Shred Day on Saturday at the CAA service centre on Empress Street.
The day was about inviting people to come and destroy personal documents that could be used for identity theft, said CAA spokesperson Liz Kulyk.
“Old tax returns, bank statements, even computer disks…things that are personally identifiable that if got in the hands of a thief could be very easy to steal their identity,” she said.
Kulyk added that people often hang on to these items for too long.
“They never get around to actually shredding it or taking care of it, disposing of it,” she said. “It’s about every seven years that you want to keep your tax returns and those kinds of things on file, so once you get past those seven years, you really need to purge.”
Rob Duncan, who came to shred some bank statements and utility bills, said it was comforting to be getting rid of documents with his name on them.
“You hear so many stories about printed records blowing down somebody’s back lane, and you don’t want your personal information distributed like that,” Duncan said.
Kulyk expected to see about 600 people come to shred before the event wrapped up Saturday afternoon.
