As concerns over identity theft grow, the shredder is emerging as a symbol for the Age of Anxiety.
As unlikely as it sounds, some people are willingly, even enthusiastically, spending upward of $1,000 on shredders heavy duty enough to reduce personal documents and other items to the consistency of confetti .
For some, of course, shredding is simply another time-consuming chore, but for others, it offers a sense of security and accomplishment - the satisfaction that comes from decimating a pile of junk mail.
“It’s very cathartic,” said Sam Gosling, the author of “Snoop: What Your Stuff Says About You” and a professor of psychology at the University of Texas at Austin. Mr. Gosling owns a $50 shredder that he is not too fond of, but he can see the appeal of shredding.
“I’ve always liked chopping wood and banging in nails,” he said. “It has that fascination of machinery and destruction. And with this, you’re destroying the very things that are the source of the frustration. With an annoying phone call or e-mail, you can’t do much more than just hang up or delete it.”
Fellowes, a company that makes an array of consumer shredders in the $50 to $2,000 price range, reports that according to product registrations it received for several models designed for commercial use sold in the last two years, about a quarter of them are being used at home.
Maureen Moore, a vice president for marketing at the company, offered one explanation. “Five years ago, consumers were just becoming aware of identity theft and buying low-end shredders to protect themselves,” she said. “Then they shredded far more than they anticipated with machines that underperformed, and the result was frustration. For the second shredder, consumers traded up.”
Isaac de la Fuente, the owner of Mono Machines in Brooklyn, sells the high-end Destroyit line, which is made in Germany and could be considered the Mercedes of shredders, since the least expensive one is about $380.
“People come to me for year three, after the $50 one broke and then the $150 one broke,” he said. “They realize that buying a new shredder every year adds up.”
When all kinds of information can be found on the Internet, shredding might seem pointless, but paper is still the easiest way to get someone’s personal information, said Jay Foley, the executive director of the Identity Theft Resource Center in San Diego, California. And given that 11.1 million people lost a total of $54 billion to identity theft in 2009, up from 8.1 million people losing $45 billion in 2007, according to the center, shredding is more important than ever.
Mr. Foley himself has a shredder at his office and one at home. “I’m a little security-phobic,” he said. “It would not bode well for the director of the Identity Theft Resource Center to get his identity stolen.”
Years ago, Ival McMains, a certified public accountant in San Diego , purchased a cheap shredder, became frustrated and traded up. His new shredder , with a .75-horsepower motor and 14-sheet capacity, make it a voracious little beast - “a box with teeth,” he calls it.
He’s become so habituated to the thrill of shredding that it’s hard for him to do without it. “It’s funny, I almost get paranoid when I am traveling,’’ he said, “when I have some document of a transaction, and I think, ‘What am I going to do with this?’ ”
Tom Lussier, a Manhattan event producer, also upgraded after a bad experience with a cheap shredder, and has since upgraded twice.
“Basically, I shred any piece of mail that has my name and address on it,” Mr. Lussier said. “My assistant used to call me the Compulsive Shredder. I once accidentally shredded a check for $60,000.”
By DAVID COLMAN
