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I ((Shred)) U

My local Sangenjaya post office now offers a shredder - for munging transaction receipts. Its front facade includes a small window to watch the shreds fall, which combined with the motion and noise of the activity brings a certain closure valuable-personal-data destroying process. A shredder situated here is intriguing because it suggests there is sufficient demand from customers for tangible proof of their transaction, but that tangible proof is destroyed shortly after being received. Or alternatively that people make errors during the transaction process and don't want to carry the tangible result of those errors.

Is there a point we start to see physical shredders such as this move further into the public mainstream? And if that occurs will some service providers up the ante by including more sensitive data on the physical receipts, assuming that it can destroyed? But is your personal data really destroyed? How to hack the device to intercept receipts and give the impression that your personal data is being shredded?

Two separate tacks: what is the digital equivalent of a public-use shredder?; are there lessons from this that apply to electronic voting machines?

And the reason for hitting the 24 hour post office? NF - package angekommen, ta!

Writing from Sangenjaya, back of | June 15, 2007 | Permalink