In June 2019, I purchased some breakables on eBay. The items arrived well-protected and well-packed, padded with balled-up pages of what I originally thought was a tax manual; I appreciated the seller’s great care in packing my purchase. While I was flattening the pages so that I could put them together in the recycling bin, I noticed completed tax forms as well. Since the names on the tax forms were not the name listed in the return address, I surmised that the seller was using printed tax forms for her/his clients as packing material. As you might imagine, I was shocked as these forms included private information. To protect these unsuspecting clients, I shredded all the pages and mixed them with food garbage to accelerate their decay.
While I had no problem with the pages of the manual as packing materials (great idea and great use for unwanted, used paper), I do have a problem with the use of tax forms containing private information being used as packing material. I waited over a year to post this comment with my request to sellers on the eBay Community so that the seller would not feel singled-out if she/he read this post.
My request to sellers: please be careful not to use pages with private information as packing material as doing so could be problematic for yourselves or others.
