Does anyone else have a 'black box'?

[Smudge]

I have a small, waterproof orange container that has a USB inside it with all of my identity information on it. I have scans of my driver's license, rsa and rcg, organ donor card, birth certificate, passport, health card, and a bunch of medical records. I made this so that if I ever need any of those important documents to send for whatever reason, I can do it pretty easily. It would also be super helpful if my body ever needed identifying. Macabre I guess.

Does anyone else have one of these? Do you think it's kinda stupid of me to carry around all my personal info like this? It would leave me open to identity theft if anyone ever found it I guess. What do you think?

 

[Deleted member 21429]

I have all that in a tiny drive as well. Swiss Army even makes a knife with a 32gb little drive as one of the blades. I think it is smart to have. Once I have my stepvan ready I'll have all the info on that as well. Some people who travel and blog have a drive built right into the wall with the usb wire coming out so they can back up everything. Just hide it really really well and keep your peace of mind. ~ peace

 

[Deleted member 125]

i mean aside of the concern of identity theft that you mentioned i dont think theres anything wrong with having medical information on something like that. although if yer in a situation where you need that kind of help im not sure youd be able to direct them to where the drive is. but on the macabre side of stuff sure i guess its kinda like a digital version of a military dog tag.

 

[IAmThePoisonIvy]

I've got one of those on my wallet. I also keep cookbooks, regular books, and some other stuff on it in case I ever need it. I'd recommend watermarking the pictures of documents though. That way they can't really be used for identity theft

 

[boongah4]

Just a thought but...

Some of those documents are pretty sensitive and not the sort of thing you'd want to share with the general public. At the same time, it's a reasonable expectation that you might need access to these documents (health records, etc) in certain situations.

I think the most practical solution is to store the documents online with a service like Dropbox or Google Drive. This is effectively no different than having the USB drive on your person because you are going to need a computer to access them in either event. Although, the docs will be more secure in Dropbox or Drive than on your person (you have to sleep sometime).

If you'd prefer, not to use Dropbox or Google Drive there are other services available or you can roll your own cloud file server. I mention those two because they are the most widely used not because I recommend them. I can post more about that if anyone is interested.

Lastly, if you don't want your plain text medical records sitting in the cloud somewhere you could encrypt them using GPG. More on that if anyone is interested.

 

[ridecracksmokestacks]

^^what boongah said. No way I'd carry around this much info on me. There's really no reason to carry any documentation on you at all anymore as cloud storage is so easily accessible. If anything, I think I'd put emergency contact info on the flash drive -- along with the same info on a handwritten note.

 

[Tekamthi]

I'm with op -- carrying this on you is a good idea, and outweighs the risks if done right. Add the really sensitive documents to a .zip with (strong) password using aes-256 or better (aka just use the default encryption option in 7zip). With a very unguessable password, thoughtful file names (these will be still visible, but not their contents) this will be safe from anyone short of the most well-resourced identity thieves, and I expect none of us are really worth their time. If you're on some Interpol list you might want better security, but otherwise simple measures like this are both easily accessed when needed and secure.

 

[iamnotanasshole]

I'm with op -- carrying this on you is a good idea, and outweighs the risks if done right. Add the really sensitive documents to a .zip with (strong) password using aes-256 or better (aka just use the default encryption option in 7zip). With a very unguessable password, thoughtful file names (these will be still visible, but not their contents) this will be safe from anyone short of the most well-resourced identity thieves, and I expect none of us are really worth their time. If you're on some Interpol list you might want better security, but otherwise simple measures like this are both easily accessed when needed and secure.

Very well said!!! Use encryption and very strong password.