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Where do you all keep your important documents? (birth certs, car titles, etc)

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Mixolydian said:
You throw away your birth certificate and car titles? :hmm:
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Yep. I needed a birth certificate for something ten years or so ago and easily got a copy by filling out an online form. I'm not keeping something that I've only ever needed once in my entire life.

I've never needed a car title for anything past a few months after buying it. I buy a car and keep it until it's junk and then go get another one. The IRS has records of every tax return I've ever filed. They are in to keeping excessive amounts of documentation. That's their deal, not mine.

I do have my original SS card but I only keep that as an example of how nice I could sign my name in cursive at one time.
 
Rakehellion said:
No one cares about your Zeppelin playlist. Make it some actual personal information and post it on a hacker website and see the results.
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It'll be the same results I'm getting here; none. Feel free to post it anywhere you like. I'd be less impressed with you for not cracking it yourself, but I'll give you a cookie for the effort.
 
My birth certificate is in my wallet. Passport is in my underwear drawer. Everything else is in a folder in a desk.

KT
 
No clue where my birth certificate is. I don't think my parents ever gave it to me. Everything else (titles, social security cards, passports are in a fire safe bolted to my basement floor.
 
lxskllr said:
It'll be the same results I'm getting here; none. Feel free to post it anywhere you like. I'd be less impressed with you for not cracking it yourself, but I'll give you a cookie for the effort.
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The net effect would be the same regardless of who cracked it.

I'm not copping out because I don't want to, but rather because I'm not going to take the time to. I also didn't elaborate on what exactly I do with my job when it comes to encryption either (hint: it's not my job to crack shit, but it is my job to know how easy it is to do so).

My point is that if I were the next generation of Russian mafia going through the identity theft motions or whatever, my resources would most definitely be pointed at dropbox, skydrive, googledrive, etc., right now because that's where technology and people's "comfort level," when it comes to security, intersect.

Tin foil hat? Maybe. But it's my job.
 
SunnyD said:
I know this is going to become a rather popular suggestion here soon enough given the ubiquity of it all, but there is absolutely NO FUCKING WAY IN HELL I'm going to put any documents like that in any sort of cloud storage medium, just waiting to be hacked.

Scan and store a local copy on a USB drive in a local safe while the physical copies are in a safe deposit box, sure. Cloud storage? Fuck no.
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Yea, that's my feeling about Cloud storage. I do scan a few sensitive documents, but they are stored locally on encrypted volumes. All the physical copies are in my safety deposit box.
 
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SunnyD said:
I know this is going to become a rather popular suggestion here soon enough given the ubiquity of it all, but there is absolutely NO FUCKING WAY IN HELL I'm going to put any documents like that in any sort of cloud storage medium, just waiting to be hacked.

Scan and store a local copy on a USB drive in a local safe while the physical copies are in a safe deposit box, sure. Cloud storage? Fuck no.
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For added protection, put all the files in an encrypted archive, then onto the USB drive.
 
I'm kind of interested in getting some of my things scanned to digital format, but I know nothing about encrypting files. Could someone point me in the right direction?
 
akahoovy said:
I'm kind of interested in getting some of my things scanned to digital format, but I know nothing about encrypting files. Could someone point me in the right direction?
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I use gpg, but I'm on Debian. There's a gpg client for Windows, but it doesn't look like it supports 64bit. A Duck search gave me this for Windows...

http://gpg4win.org/

It looks decent, but I have no personal experience. TrueCrypt is also popular, and is probably the leading name in encryption suites.
 
I refused to pay $75/year any longer for a safe deposit box (Chase) so I got a safe. How much are you guys paying for a safe deposit box?
 
Sadly, I must admit ignorance regarding any such documents. My wife has them stored somewhere and she once told me that if anything happened to her, "all of our important documents are in the ..." and I can't remember what she said after that.

I should probably ask her again when I get home.
 
Originals in safe deposit box, paper copies at home.

I tried going to scanned copies of important docs but I realized I would never be comfortable that if someone had to settle my affairs due to my untimely demise, that a collection of scanned PDFs on my PC would be sufficient. So I went back to paper copies of the important stuff.

Now all they have to do is see the large red binder in the den labeled "Important Records". No technology concerns, no worries that they are computer-literate.
 
I keep them in the safe right next to the Guns and Ammo.

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We keep ours in a safe hidden in the house. I've often thought that a SD box would be better but the hassle of running to the bank every time we need them turns me off.

I don't think I would ever feel comfortable uploading them to an off site facility. Encrypted or not something about it just doesn't sit right with me.
 
Anonemous said:
Just make a true crypt container upload onto dropbox and place scanned documents in said container.
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So, related to the point I brought up earlier, if you are incapacitated or killed, and your next of kin or executor needs access to those docs, how would they get at them?
 
kranky said:
So, related to the point I brought up earlier, if you are incapacitated or killed, and your next of kin or executor needs access to those docs, how would they get at them?
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Digital copies are good for backups, and many are useless for official purposes by themselves. They can be a good start to replacing hard copies, and sometimes just viewing the information is enough for a particular task. IOW, you shouldn't throwout the originals after scanning. Digital isn't a replacement, but an adjunct to the original.
 
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