Jackson, MS—Attorney General Jim Hood is pleased to announce the results of Mississippi’s sixth Community Shred-It Days, a joint effort with the Secretary of State’s Office, Better Business Bureau (BBB) of Mississippi, BancorpSouth and CredAbility, a non-profit counseling service.

Events were held statewide (D?Iberville, Hattiesburg, Jackson, Tupelo, Meridian and Vicksburg) March 9-10, 2012, in conjunction with National Consumer Protection Week.  Mississippi residents were invited to shred their sensitive documents for free.  This year numbers for many of the locations skyrocketed from previous years.  There were approximately 1,370 Mississippians participating in this year?s event, up from 1,328 last year. The Shred-It company, the primary sponsor of the event, estimated 50,460 pounds of paper were shredded.

Meridian and Vicksburg were two new locations added to this year?s event, making six locations statewide. 

Community Shred-It Days were intended to raise community awareness of the risks of identity theft and to provide citizens access to one of the simplest yet most important methods of identity theft protection, document shredding.

?It is essential to shred all documents containing social security numbers, account numbers or other private information before throwing them in the trash,? said Attorney General Jim Hood.  ?Since we began this partnership, we have helped over 4,400 Mississippi consumers shred over 240,000 pounds of paper containing personal information.  We have no doubt that this partnership has potentially saved many Mississippians from becoming victims of identity theft.?

Additional sponsors of the 2012 Shred It event were Wal-Mart, The Home Depot, Leadership Council on Aging, Mississippi State University Extension Service, BancorpSouth Insurance Services, and other Mississippi Consumer Education Partnership members.