ABCOffice.com's Paper Shredder Equipment Guide summarizes the types of paper shredders, and definitions of the five security levels of paper shredding. I don't know how official the security levels are, but level 5 claims to be approved by the U.S. Department of Defense for top secret shredding (cross-cut 1/32-inch x 1/2-inch).

I've wanted a nice deskside paper shredder for a long time, so I finally decided to get one. The Fellowes P500-2 personal strip-cut shredder was the only one in stock at my local Office Depot, and it's nice and inexpensive. Alas, it's only a strip-cut shredder, and while it's plenty for credit card applications, I'm not sure if it's sufficient for bank statements and receipts. It turned one page into thirty strips of paper, and, knowing that they're all from one page, it would take mere minutes to reconstruct the document. Thirty pages worth would be a more difficult puzzle, but not unreasonably so if the payoff is a thousand dollars worth of identity theft. The cross-cut model is only $20 more, and it seems quite worth it.

Merchants that print entire credit card numbers on their receipts with the expiration date and my signature ("the yellow copy is yours") are the bane of my existence, and I don't think any personal cross-cut shredder would help me with that. I guess what I really want is a house with a fireplace. Of course, I'm fairly certain there are easier ways of getting credit card numbers than assembling shredded garbage, so maybe it's not worth the effort I go to to destroy receipts. But a shredder is nice peace of mind.