This one goes out to all of you octogenarians out there who still receive print papers at your door every morning.
You know how you notify the Chronicle to temporarily halt having the paper sent to your house? You know, before you go on vacation? That way burglars won't see piled up papers and break into your house and steal all of your diamonds and rubies you had since the war between the states? Well, some ingenious criminals found a way of getting around that.
ABC 7 reports that Grant Whiteman -- a young piece of tail, we must admit -- made a profitable habit of dumpster diving over at the Chronicle's distribution center in Concord. Why? Brilliantly, to gather all of the change-order sheets that drivers use to see who wants their paper temporarily withheld. "Hundreds and hundreds and hundreds" of these sheets, it seems, contain personal information such as addresses, phone numbers, dates of return...pretty much everything you need to know in order to swipe grandma's sapphire brooch. Sheets that by all logic should be shredded post-use.
It's a great article, and you get to see Whiteman get all pissy and walkout during his interview after being questioned about using the sheets. (And as delighted as we would be to see Dan Noyes at our door, we probably wouldn't answer it if he had a microphone in hand and camera close by. Really, what kind of interview did Whiteman expect, anyway?) And this is further proof that you should cancel your print publications and start going online. (Like, say, um, to SFist, of example.) Does anyone out there still subscribe to print issues of their favorite newspapers? A strange habit, indeed.