The dumpster is a magical place, full of golden trash that can tell you so much about another human being. While you can acquire plenty of useful information digitally, you can learn even more from what people throw away.


The Best Ways to Invade Someone's Privacy So you want to be a creeper but you don't know how? Not to worry, we can help you out. It's easy to Read more

Note: This post discusses ways you can invade someone's privacy, but is written tongue-in-cheek. We don't actually recommend you start digging through trash. Use the information here to protect yourself, not hurt others.


Isn't "Borrowing" Someone's Trash Illegal?

Actually, no. Dumpster diving isn't really illegal in many states. If you're a member of the police force, you can legally sift through and claim trash without a warrant and the circumstances are pretty much the same for civilians:

The current law in the U.S.A. (federal as well as most states) is that (1) a person has no reasonable expectation of privacy for contents of garbage and (2) a person has relinquished any property interest in garbage, even when it sits in metal trash cans or opaque plastic bags at the person's home awaiting collection. This sorry state of affairs needs correction, probably by legislation.

It may be illegal in some states, but trash appears to be fair game for the most part. Trespassing, on the other hand, is illegal. If the trash is on a person's private property, you ought to wait until they bring it out to the curb to hunt for goodies.

What Can I Find in the Trash?


You can find a lot of useful in formation in the trash. Security expert Brandon Gregg provides several examples:

Dumpster diving, trash pulls, digging in the garbage or whatever you may call it often times provides great intel and evidence due to people's consistent disregard for their own privacy. What maybe a meaningless piece of garbage to them, can build your intel about the suspect to a level that would creep the average person out. Family names, former addresses, phone numbers, account numbers, bank statements, credit card purchases, DNA (toothbrushes, combs, cups, etc) and a whole slough of raw data can be found and combined to give you further intel gathering tools (social engineering, pre-texting, etc) or even provide you with a smoking gun for your investigation.


How do you use this information to your advantage? Whatever you find in the garbage can be cross-referenced with other found garbage or information online. Use the information you discovered in the trash to search for new information online, then look for commonalities and see what's accurate. It's pretty basic stuff, but important. If information doesn't add up, you may have actual trash on your hands and not details about a person you can actually use.

How People Can Foil Your Plans

Clever people will obliterate their private information before throwing it away. Shredding sensitive documents, mail with any personal data on it, and even prescription drug labels makes it much harder to learn things about them. That said, you may want to learn about a person's day-to-day activities or find out details about their lives. If they only shred sensitive information, you can still learn plenty from greeting cards, letters, and other mail (e.g. their birthday, who their friends and family are, when they're planning a vacation, etc.). The only way a person can truly foil a dumpster diver is to shred it all.


This post is part of our Evil Week series at Lifehacker, where we look at the dark side of getting things done. Knowing evil means knowing how to beat it, so you can use your sinister powers for good. Want more? Check out our evil week tag page.

Images by MilsiArt (Shutterstock), milicateo (Shutterstock), and Claire S.