Old Cheque Books

prowla

Tear the cheques in half and they'll be unusable.

Neil49

In the original post the OP said they had a few cheque books.

In the time spent on this thread they could have have simply torn off the ends of the cheques where their name is and then torn through the account number. Sprinkle resulting pieces of paper into a mix of your paper recycling to further mix everything up and watch as the bin is emptied into the back of the waste disposal lorry.

Job done. 

RG2015

Action Fraud was mentioned earlier in the thread, but on the issue of names and financial information specifically they say the following.

Protect yourself against identity fraud

• Don’t throw out anything with your name, address or financial details without shredding it first.

As @IanManc said earlier, this sounds like authoritative advice. Some have said here that Action Fraud are useless, but it remains a personal decision to follow or ignore their advice.

I guess also that some think that Action Fraud should go into business selling tin foil hats as well.


https://www.actionfraud.police.uk/a-z-of-fraud/identity-fraud-and-identity-theft

emmajones1976

People seem to have short memories when it comes to cheques. For decades people used to dish them out to all and sundry, account details along the bottom, but the mere though of putting DEFUNCT cheques in the bin seems to horrify people.

MikeWhite

Emily_Joy said:

smashinglynaive said:

Emily_Joy said:

I have been tidying up my papers and found a few cheque books for the accounts which have been closed by switching some a year or two ago. What would be a safe way to get rid of them? I haven't got a shredder.

Throwing them in the bin is a perfectly safe way of getting rid of them.

In this particular case your advice lives is up to your username. My old cheque book contains my name, my old address and bank account details. The only bits which are missing are a phone number, which is google-able, my job requires that it is available online,  and date of birth which is also google-able. What value does it have? Perhaps somebody will be sufficiently interested to take a credit agreement in my name with one of not-so-picky credit providers?

All emails from the banks include family name and post code for a reason. The more fraudsters know about you, the easier for them is impersonate you or somebody who you are supposed to trust.

Hmm, my cheque books page with the address on clearly says to remove and destroy that page on receipt.

MikeWhite

Emily_Joy said:

Daliah said:

born_again said:

The Cheque Redirection Service

A key benefit of the Current Account Switch Service is the promise that any payments made to your old account will be redirected to your new account for 36 months after your switch takes place. The Cheque Redirection Service, which is owned and operated by the Cheque and Credit Clearing Company, is part of this service. 

https://www.chequeandcredit.co.uk/cheque-users/consumers/current-account-switch-service

This is about cheques written to you, not about cheques that someone wrote against a non-existent account. If anyone tried the latter, the cheque would simply bounce.

No it is not. It is about the cheques you've issued. It says clearly here:

it works by ensuring that any cheques that you’ve issued on your old account, but which get paid in after your old account has closed, will be redirected to your new bank to be paid. This will happen even if you accidentally use your old chequebook after the switch date.

The cheque that you’ve written will still be paid provided:

• There are sufficient funds on the new account or a sufficient overdraft facility
• The cheque has not been stopped; and
• The cheque passes the usual technical checks.

OP stated the accounts were closed a year or two ago. Cheques that old are not supposed to be processed.

Ballard

emmajones1976 said:

People seem to have short memories when it comes to cheques. For decades people used to dish them out to all and sundry, account details along the bottom, but the mere though of putting DEFUNCT cheques in the bin seems to horrify people.

That's not entirely true though, is it. People didn't dish them out to all and sundry. They gave them to people to whom they owed money. There's quite a difference between that and leaving them in the street for any Tom, Richard or Harry to pick up.

That said, I think that securely destroying them is probably unnecessary but being as it would take 60-90 seconds I'd prefer to risk wasting a minute of my time to be sure that nothing untoward could come.

Money_Grabber13579

MikeWhite said:

Emily_Joy said:

Daliah said:

born_again said:

The Cheque Redirection Service

A key benefit of the Current Account Switch Service is the promise that any payments made to your old account will be redirected to your new account for 36 months after your switch takes place. The Cheque Redirection Service, which is owned and operated by the Cheque and Credit Clearing Company, is part of this service. 

https://www.chequeandcredit.co.uk/cheque-users/consumers/current-account-switch-service

This is about cheques written to you, not about cheques that someone wrote against a non-existent account. If anyone tried the latter, the cheque would simply bounce.

No it is not. It is about the cheques you've issued. It says clearly here:

it works by ensuring that any cheques that you’ve issued on your old account, but which get paid in after your old account has closed, will be redirected to your new bank to be paid. This will happen even if you accidentally use your old chequebook after the switch date.

The cheque that you’ve written will still be paid provided:

• There are sufficient funds on the new account or a sufficient overdraft facility
• The cheque has not been stopped; and
• The cheque passes the usual technical checks.

OP stated the accounts were closed a year or two ago. Cheques that old are not supposed to be processed.

Yes, if the cheques were written a year or two ago (but even then, not impossible). But if the cheques are written now, they could still be drawn on the new account potentially.

RG2015

I am saddened by the depths to which criminals will sink to get their hands on you money. They are evil, without conscience, and constantly finding new ways to defraud you.

I am not so arrogant as to believe that I will never be caught out. Therefore I remain vigilant.

Some of the advice from Action Fraud does appear to be over the top, but it is a personal decision whether to follow it.

Edit. To give my post some context, it was partly in response to a post earlier today which has now been removed. 

Emily_Joy

emmajones1976 said:

People seem to have short memories when it comes to cheques. For decades people used to dish them out to all and sundry, account details along the bottom, but the mere though of putting DEFUNCT cheques in the bin seems to horrify people.

I believe in the days you are talking about, there was no such thing called Internet, so it was much, much harder to get information sufficient for the Identity Theft.