This week we were challenged to physically destroy some data. I’ve chosen to unshred a document. Not a special document , just some junk mail that came in an envelope marked ‘Victorian Energy Upgrade Notice’ from Telus Electrical Services. So I know it has something to do with electricity. I deliberately avoided reading or looking at it. Although I did inadvertently notice that it is double sided and a row of icons in golden circles is on one side of the document. This might be a clue when it comes to reconstruction, I’ll assess if I can proceed and be true to the activity.

Step 1 shredding

First I shred the document. This is good, I knew we had a shredder somewhere and had been meaning to get it out and start using it. I’m a little disappointed with the results with the strips being 8mm wide. I think we should get a better shredder.

Step 2 orientate the shreds

The first step was to orientate the shreds so I can look for patterns and start matching them. To do this I picked the side with more features, varying font sizes, text colours, images. You can clearly see in the photo the strips of golden circle I mentioned in step one. I don’t think that knowledge will impact the learning outcomes of the activity so I will proceed.

The areas I will look at for matching are: heading text, golden circles at around the halfway mark, I can make out images of different types of light globes above the golden circles icons below the golden circles, what looks like a URL at the bottom of the page.

Time taken: 3:33

Step 3: arranging the pieces

This was a lot easier than I was expecting. Much easier. I think I lucked out with the document in question, the icons and images definitely aided in doing this.

Time taken: 5:17

Step 4: reassembly

This was the hardest part for me, taping the paper together so it was all inline. I ended up using a ruler to help keep the strips flat near where I taped. The result is readable on both sides, but the photos show it is not perfect.

Time taken: not sure, I received a phone call during the process and left my timer running. I estimate that it took about 10 minutes.

Front

Back

Improvements to process

I think if I were to pursue unshredding as a career, I’d spend some time investigating options for reassembly. I have used adhesive vinyl wrap to prevent scratches on stainless steel machinery in a manufacturing capacity. The adhesive is similar to post-it notes, it sticks but is removable. I think a section of this with the adhesive side up would be a good surface to arrange the strips on. Then they could be taped together and removed from the adhesive vinyl wrap.

Reflection

This has taught me that shredded documents are not 100% destroyed, these points will help make unshredding more difficult:

• Use a cross shredder
• Shred multiple pages together, ideally multiple documents. Like a long password, more paper to sort will add to the work effort to reconstruct.
• Add a decoy with relatively easy to identify elements, eg a birthday invite, kids chores list.

If you want to ensure destruction,

• burn the confetti you made with the cross shredder
• mix, pound, burn until it is a fine ash
• distribute it around your garden, local parks. This will hide the fact that you even destroyed them to start with.