14 DAY TRIAL // Privacy is extremely important and nobody could ever think that when signing a contract with a certain company you could end by searching for your documents on the street. According to The Inquirer, Carphone Warehouse, also known as The Phone House, threw all kinds of documents including billing authorizations, certificates and contracts in a public bin by the simple reason that they cost too much. Until now, the company, which currently has more than 1,700 stores around Europe, made copies of all the documents and stored them just in case of something.
All the copies were stored in a "semi-independent," as the Inquirer editors named it, office in Lisbon. However, due to the fact this operation costs too much, the company's executives took the decision to throw the documents. Where? In a public bin that could allow anyone interested to get the documents and make a huge database of identities just of their own ID theft pleasure.
According to the same source, thousands of people already got their documents thrown in street, but we're still waiting for an official statement from Carphone Warehouse.
So, keeping all these documents would be too expensive for such a large company. OK, I agree it's expensive. But, the simplest paper shredder on the market costs no less than 20 bucks, according to an entry on Amazon. Well, I guess 20 bucks is just a piece of cake for a company which recorded revenues of no less than 3,991 million pounds in 2007...
However, this is not the first time when such a case occurs because we've seen similar ones. Some time ago, the private documents belonging to a bank were found in a public bin, just like in today's case, accessible to anyone who may be interested in an ID theft attack.