Journal: News & Comment

Destroying credit cards made easy

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When you get a replacement credit card or cancel one, how do you destroy the old one reasonably securely? Here are two tips:

• I cut the card into strips, which both separate the card number into chunks and excise it from the expiration date. Then I distribute the bits to various garbage cans around the house, which each get emptied at different times, making it unlikely that the fragments would end up in the same curb can, or even get collected on the same garbage day.
  
  
• My wife has a much simpler method, learned from her dad: she melts the bits of the old card in the fireplace.

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