I had furniture out earlier today and put up a take me sign............  Thankfully someone took it.

I put my regular trash out at the curb for the trash man in the morning..............  Someone took it.  ETA Not the Trash Company

All of the sudden I am a kinds of paranoid....  But from what I can recall it is all useless trash.  I hope they have fun sorting thru it  all kinds of unmentionable nasties.

Nobody has ever stolen mine, but I've donated trash to people who don't want it!  

Quoted: I had furniture out earlier today and put up a take me sign............  Thankfully someone took it. I put my regular trash out at the curb for the trash man in the morning..............  Someone took it. All of the sudden I am a kinds of paranoid....  But from what I can recall it is all useless trash.  I hope they have fun sorting thru it  all kinds of unmentionable nasties.

Were the suspects all dressed in the same clothing with their names embroidered on the shirt?  What about the vehicle?.....A large truck perhaps?  Sounds like you should call the police.

Quoted: I had furniture out earlier today and put up a take me sign............  Thankfully someone took it. I put my regular trash out at the curb for the trash man in the morning..............  Someone took it. All of the sudden I am a kinds of paranoid....  But from what I can recall it is all useless trash.  I hope they have fun sorting thru it  all kinds of unmentionable nasties.

Sounds like you were hit by either;

a) The police
b) a Private Investigator
c) Identity thieves

In any case, you no longer own trash you set out for pick up.  Shred EVERYTHING!!!

People don't tend to go through ashes...  Go figure.

Run some searches on the net about trash and who owns it.

Some court said it was ok for reporters to take trash that was on the curb, I believe that judge got mad when some reporter took his trash and wrote an article about him.

Some people have done it to reporters after having reporters do it to them.

Overall, be paranoid.  

The super duper shredders seem good, cross cut and whatever else they do.  My dad got one since he had a few hundred pounds of old paperwork he wanted to get rid of.

I personally believe in fire.  A wood stove or a fireplace or whatever it takes to legally burn stuff in your area is able to do the job.  However, if you just toss some papers in to burn they can still be readable to some extent.  It helps to burn stuff and stir the ashes and to actually know what you are calling ashes are not small pieces of paper with legible ink still visable on them.  

My dad had too much stuff to really bother with burning it all.  I burn everything here and there over the year while doing campfires, wood heating, and whatever else.

Overall, your trash is not yours.  Some places have tried to say it is but I think most of those laws got tossed since it was mostly burbs trying to make their little ideal world instead of reality.

Like I said, a search is fun.

You should be very paranoid now.

The funny thing is that it was all actually trash,  food, toiletries, old torn clothes, trash from yardwork..... absolutely nothing related to me, my finances, the house etc...    Fourunately it was all useless for an identity thief.  but stressful anyway.

Do a Google search on the word "Curtilage", basically the law says that whatever you put out at the curb is fair game and doesn't require a search warrant to get it. We used trash runs to develop PC on so many cases and get search warrants based upon our findings.

Case Law:

The US Supreme Court, in California v. Greenwood [486 U.S. 35 (1988)] upheld that a person does not have a reasonable expectation of privacy in garbage that has been left out with the curtilage of a residence or at the curb for collection and would thereby not be a violation of a persons 4th Amendment right if the garbage was picked up from there.

In United States v. Hedrick [922 F.2d 396 (7th Cir. 1991)], the U.S. Court of Appeals also held that the defendant had no reasonable expectation of privacy on garbage left on his driveway (50 feet from the house, 20 feet from and unattached garage, and 18 feet from the sidewalk) for collection, even though it was on the curtilage, because there was no fence or other barrier securing the area, and it was readily accessible to children, scavengers, snoops, or other members of the public.
See also: Unites States v. Shanks [97 F.3d 977 (7th Cir. 1996)]
See also: United States v. Redmon [117 F.3d 1036, 1038 n. 2 (7th Cir. 1997)]

In North Carolina v. Hauser [464 S.E.2d 443 (NC 1995)] the court held that a police officer who requested that a sanitation worker pick up the trash from the back of the defendant's residence and deliver it to the officer did not violate any constitutional rights to privacy as the trash was collected from the curtilage by the regular garbage collector, in the usual manner on the scheduled collection day.

Links:
California v. Greenwood et al
laws.findlaw.com/us/486/35.html

United States v. Booker T. Shanks
laws.lp.findlaw.com/getcase/7th/case/961578.html

Unites States v. Joseph R. Redmon.
lw.bna.com/lw/19980331/963361.htm

4th Amendment Searches of Garbage
serv1.law.emory.edu/sites/CRIMPRO/garbage2.html

yea, once u place it there it's no longer yours

Haven't had my trash stolen, but I shred all sensitive trash so steal away!

The reality of it is I dont really care that it is gone since it was in fact trash,  I dont claim ownership of it.  I am glad however that there was nothing in it.

I've been one of those Cops who sneaks around early in the morning and takes trash. It' a goldmine of information but a really, really nasty job.

I have taken old furniture and stuff like that, but never taken bags of trash.

Mine has always stayed in place.

I had a full trashcan stolen from the curb in front of my house about 20 years ago when I lived in Seattle.
The trashed turned up a couple of blocks away dumped out in front of someones house on a deadend. I found out about it from the  pissed off homeowner.

No, but some bitch stole my rug that was hung up airing out in my carport. Then some other wierdo took a bag of dog food and my grandfathers bino's out of the back of my truck.

We get folks that go through our recycle barrel.  Probably looking for recyclable bottles and cans they can turn in for scrap value.

Told them I was a Federale and was going to call the Migre next time I saw them.  Told them in Spanish after they pulled the no speak English routine.  They got the idea. Haven't seen them since.

Quoted: No, but some bitch stole my rug that was hung up airing out in my carport.

Did some Chinaman piss on it?

I shred anything important, then put dog shit in all the bags. (100lb lab, so I have enough to go around)

I do have a junk picker stop and check out larger crap items once in a while. One time he took a torpedo heater with a bad motor and all the scraps from when I had my house resided

No. Not that I know of.

I used to work in a paper mill that used 100% scrap paper to make new paper. We'd get all kinds of important paper from all over that had people's information on it. I remember once we had a large bale that came from a hospital and contained employees SS number, address, what they made per year (many in the 6 figure) as well as other info. I remember thinking that they're lucky I'm not a crook because of all this information being listed together. Scary how lazy some companies are with "trash".

I don't ever remember my garbage taken but my sister-in-law had hers taken by a couple of guys in a van. She was worried for awhile.

No, no ones ever stolen the trash. The credit card offers get burnt or shredded, and the actual trash is pretty fragrant by the time it gets to the curb, especially in the summer.

Put an IED in the trash next time.

I use a cross cut shredder for all things paper and toss it in a local community recycling place and it gets mixed with a container full of other people's trash paper.

Nothing leaves my house with my name or address on it.  I even peel and burn prescription med labels from the vet for my cat, cut the address label off magazines before recycling them and shred those labels,

I shred most everything with words on it and burn anything with my name or other information on it.

To my knowledge, no one has ever stolen my trash.

I lived in an apartment next door to a foreign guy and his American roommate.  Everyone in the building put their trash into common bins out in the circle.  I came home one afternoon to find everyone's trash strewn all over the circle, obviously picked through and abandoned.

Being concerned about identity theft, I started investigating.  The true story emerged about a week later, when I spoke to my American neighbor.  He had left town for a week, leaving the foreign guy home alone.  The American was into recycling and separated his trash before putting it out into the recycle bins.  He had asked his roommate to separate the trash before putting it out before he left town.

Apparently there was a misunderstanding, as the foreigner had dug through the trash outside in an attempt to separate everyone's trash and put it into the bins.  He had given up halfway through and left the trash strewn across the circle.  Recycling is not a well understood concept in most third-world countries.

dumpster diving is getting pretty big these days and apparently now people are going after private peoples trash.

yes , plus the very large plastic trash container  . most everything gits burnt these days . had to file a police report before the city would bring me another .
688

Yes i did by some asshat named jerry rivers and the next thing you know i'm on fox news!

Can't prove it but pretty sure neighbor's kid ripped off our container from our trash company.

Had to pay to get a second one.

If I ever catch the little punk stealing that one I'll be calling the sherriff.

Sure like to moly-whopp the little shit in his ass with my size thirteen nike though.