Going through someone else's trash looking for something
valuable. Usually, this is done at
corporate offices, in hope of getting confidential papers.
Back in the day, phone
phreakers would go "trashing" at
Bell central offices, looking for disgarded
switching system manuals,
technical papers, or anything else that might help them pull off the next great
hack against the phone company.
More recently,
Oracle employees have been accused of
trashing the offices of pro-
microsoft lobbying groups. Most high-tech companies now use
paper shredders or a
secure trash service to combat this sort of activity.