The Toronto Star reports that a courtroom feud between two local paper-shredding companies has triggered allegations that confidential customer records from Canada's major banks were mishandled or lost on their road to destruction. Professor Geist comments on the dangers associated with identity theft and the use of "dumpster diving" to obtain sensitive personal information.
Paper Shredding Case Raises Privacy Fears
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An interesting development occurred in an Ontario Superior Court, before Justice Stinson, on February 11th, 2005.
Contrary to sworn allegations made by both the Vice-President and President of Hanna Paper Fibres, their counsel, one Lou Brzezinski, admitted that archived documents belonging to the Bank of Montreal, CIBC, Royal Bank, Scotiabank and TD all went from Iron Mountain to Hanna Paper and then were shipped to another company called Confidential Recycling Services.
Mr. Brzezinski is on court record as follows:
Mr. Brzezinski: That’s right so Iron Mountain was one of those companies that Hanna delievered to CRS in the sense that it took Iron Mountain paper, delivered it to CRS for sorting and then sold it back to Hanna.
Justice Stinson: Iron Mountain was a supplying customer of Hanna, Hanna would in turn deliver the paper from Iron Mountain to CRS. CRS would sort it and then return it to Hanna.
Mr. Brzezinski: Correct.
Mr. Brzezinski: …….Iron Mountain customers are the major banks of Canada, the Royal Bank, the CIBC, the Bank of Montreal and the Toronto Dominion Bank, Bank of Nova Scotia as well.
Special Note: If you are a shareholder and/or customer of any of these banks, you should know that derivative actions are moving forward so as to obtain leave of the Ontario Superior Court to commence actions against Iron Mountain for alleged breach of contract and alleged constructive fraud which no bank is willing to commence because it would expose their ultimate responsibility for security breaches over multiple years invoving billions of customer files of every imaginable type.
For more information and your support, e-mail me at ianc1@sympatico.ca
Shredding
I have been using http://www.opsus.com for all of my paper shredding needs. They are very professional and I trust them completely with all of my private documents. They are a top of the line paper shredding company