FatBottomBoy

In America this isn't nearly as big as it is in Europe.

I work in fraud for a bank and maybe 5-7% of the time we overlook documents that were stolen. This would include utility bills which are used to verify someone's address. As far as other stolen documents, they wouldn't be in your mail. For example a picture of your social security card or a picture of a drivers license. If I had to guess how many of our fraud cases used stolen "mail"... I'd guess 1% overall. Most stolen documents pictures of IDs

Would I say to shred your mail? Ehh probably not.

I'm very curious to hear OP on this. I only have 1 perspective of this and that's from preventing fraud for a very large financial institution.

There are ways for us to verify a pdf document. Which is why we tend to ask for a picture of the statement if something isn't lining up.

Also we have ways of verifying the bill with the companies themselves. We'll verify the account number and whatnot with the name and address.

Ripping my stuff into 4s makes me feel much better now lol.

We're lending them thousands of dollars... So yes some work is needed to be done as a new client when we need information verified.