Effective June 1, 2005, a new federal document destruction law went into effect. According to the law, the government will mandate all personal information of former employees on file be destroyed before being thrown away, which means either burning or shredding the information. The "document destruction" law is a provision of the Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act (FACTA) -- the law that also guarantees consumers one free look at their credit reports each year. In addition to employee information, the law also applies to personal information of customers.