The IRS recommends that you make a photocopy of your tax return before you send it in, if not filing electronically, but you should be careful where you do this.

Many newer model copy machines have hard drives or memory storage that retains a copy of all duplicates made.

At issue are the hard drives embedded in most copiers and intelligent printers manufactured in the past five years. Data is stored on the drive before a document is copied or printed; unless security provisions are in place, the data is stored unencrypted and remains there until the drive is full and new data overwrites old.

If you don’t own a multi-function printer or copy machine, I would look for an older machine that doesn’t store what is copied, or play it completely safe by manually copying the form by hand.

[Photocopiers: The newest ID theft threat]

Tags: identity theft, id theft, privacy, irs