the middle of the night dustbin bag raiiders.

[GabbyLoggon]

They are being unreasonable....My area had a spate of it last summer.

They would rip the bags open and dump the rubbish.

Motivation? some people thought they were after bank/credit card details.

others it was just a nicking exercise.

Is it happening all over.? (our sytem is you leave the bins out overnight on collection day)

We have that happen, but never seen the foxes reading a bank statement yet.

Yep some people like to take other peoples trash. Happens from shop bins all the time.

We have to put our bags in a big recycling container to stop them getting shredded by cats.

Bloody things should be banned.

really ruby? ours are collected at 6am, I'm not going out in my pjs at 5.55am

No the coppers thought this was human beings.

the difference is easy to spot "Gabby"

must be the Grufilo

well, they say our bins have to be out from 6.30am so a lot of people leve them out overnight.

stranded.

we have different coloured wheelie bins now. It used to be black bags.

Its a fortnightly collection of each bin.

I saw headlines a bit back which said some areas would have SIX bins. (it gets crazier)

they will end up making us all take it to a tip. (and the council tax keeps increasing)
"Gabby"

This is a serious and genuine issue in many cities. Thieves will be looking for a number of things - firstly, items such as clothing that can be sold at boot sales or on eBay. Secondly and more worrying, they will be looking for items that they can use such as financial correspondence for setting up identity theft. It's especially common in areas that have black bag rather than wheeled bin collections and particularly in areas with lots of HMOs such as those lived in by students.

I've been involved professionally in clean ups in student areas and waste enforcement duties and what students throw out at the end of the year is astonishing. We would often come across virtually brand new mobiles still in their packaging, iPods, MP3 players, clothes, shoes, all sorts of personal documentation and so on. Quite horrifying.

What you can do is to ensure that ALL personal correspondence is shredded thoroughly before placing in bin. Report incidents of bin raiding to police. Keep an eye on electoral roll and credit file to check for unauthorised/suspicious activity. Do not put your bin out until the last possible time that is practical.

An Experian report on this found that in a London Borough, 1 in 10 households put out enough information to permit card not present transactions to take place. See
here for more on identity fraud.

There was a bit on the news here before Christmas, locals have seen Romanian immigrants going through their bins looking for food

well said scuttle. Thats the serious angle.

But I am going to be facetious now.

I have several plans

1. Sleep on a camp bed beside my bin.

2: Buy 2 "pitbull" type dogs and tie them to the bin

3: Buy a cardboard copper and put him on duty alongside the bin. cheers "Gabby"