I still get a lot of paper documents and statements in the postal mail. I know enough about email that I do not trust it for reliable delivery, but that is a topic for another screed. I get regular notices of attempts to "recover" my password that I did not request. Security - actually computer insecurity - is a real thing. With all the hacks and breaks in the world, it is still important to clean up your paper trail. Here is my suggestion.
I start with a paper shredder. I used to use a strip shredder that produce long strips from the sheets fed into the top. This was OK, but newer shredders are "crosscut", and they produce "chips" of paper that are far harder to reassemble. Go for a crosscut shredder; strip shredders are obsolete.
Many years ago, it was sufficient to simply dispose of the shredded strips in the garbage, but this is easily improved (in a defensive cannot-reassemble sense). I started mixing the shredded paper in with the used cat litter. I would dump the cat litter into paper grocery bags and put the shredded paper on the bottom. This may not stop someone from reassembling your shreds, but it will certainly make it unpleasant for them. If you lack cat litter, coffee grounds will work well as a mixer.
This worked well for a long time, but I have two further improvements to offer.
As a base protocol, I shred anything that has personal information on it, especially anything that has an account number or other ID on it. However, this helps a reassembler because they have some guarantee that they are spending their time and effort to assemble something of value. They can even focus on areas and shredded bits that have, say, numbers in the hope that the number will prove to be the account number. Do not give them any hints. A simple and effective improvement is to shred a lot of stuff that is generic or not sensitive. First, shred the envelopes that the documents come in. Second, shred all the supplementary informaton in the envelope - privacy notices, advertisements, and the like - after you take it out of the envelope. The shredders tend to clump pages as part of the shredding process, so take things out of the envelopes to disassociate them. Expanding this, shred nonsensitive information: junk mail. This increases the bulk, making it harder to find the good stuff. Further, it confuses the reassembler because they have far more material to select from.
The last improvement is probably the most effective. Compost the shreddings. I mix my shreds with coffee grounds. Use your home grounds and augment the bulk with used coffee grounds in bulk from your local coffee shop. They will be happy to provide you with the day's bag of used grounds. The used grounds may contain a few paper filters, but they will break down, too. Mixing shredded paper and coffee grounds in roughly equal parts is a good mix for your compost pile. I think the coffee grounds qualify as "green" and the paper as "brown". If you have read much about compost piles, you will recognize that green-brown blending accelerates the compost action. Be sure to moisten everything to get the pile cooking. In the short term, the wetted coffee will stain all the paper brown, making it much less legible. In the long term, you will have dirt for your garden, dirt that cannot be reassembled into anything. You can add any vegetable or yard trimmings that you wish to your compost. There are particular warnings against using certain weeds in home composting, and I would strongly recommend against using animal waste of any kind in a garden compost pile - no dairy, no meats, no bones, no grease, and no animal waste.
In summary, the shredded paper and coffee grounds will create a soil amendment that is totally secure and cannot be reassembled or read. Even the composting process obliterates much of the information on the shreds, so this is pretty good security for a homeowner.
As usual with any security process or advice, adapt this to your particular circumstances. If you oversee a lot of wealth, this advice may not be sufficient for you. If you oversee nominal or minimal wealth, this is a low-cost, low-effort way to protect your personal information.
