Beginning June 1, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) will start asking business owners – everyone from large corporations to small green industry firms – who obtain private customer or employee information and use it in any form, must destroy it before it goes in the garbage.
The new regulation is an effort to reduce the instances of identity theft. There were about 10 million identity theft victims nationwide in 2003, according to the FTC.
Paper documents can be burned, shredded or pulverized, whereas the rules suggest that hard drives, disks and CDs that contain sensitive information can be wiped, smashed or broken.
For those business owners who don’t comply, states can fine up to $1,000 per violation, and the federal government can fine up to $2,500 per violation, according to the FTC. In addition, civil penalties will allow victims to get actual damages, up to $1,000 per violation, if the violation was “willful.” There is also the possibility of punitive damages and class-action lawsuits.
