when i was doing research last week on shredding, i came across this "hot topic"--unshredding. wikipedia has a few paragraphs dedicated to this subject (all super interesting). the part i found the most useful is when they talk about how to properly feed the paper into the shredder to avoid unshredding by criminals. "when the documents are fed to the shredder in a way that the lines of text are not perpendicular to the shredder blades, portions of text may remain legible on the stripes." most homes are probably operating with a standard shredder that cuts paper into 34 long strips. even with the other standard home model (a confetti shredder), which cuts paper into 300 pieces, the article mentions that you're paperwork is still capable of being unshredded. the safest type of shredder to prevent this is called a micro cut shredder. this bad boy cuts one piece of paper into 3770 bits--try and piece that back together!
