[quote=svelte]
i don’t really trust anyone else to hold my data due to all the security breaches. i can remember when flu kept all his data on a computer not connected to the net for the same reason, now he lets offsite companies hold it? My, how times have changed.[/quote]
The more I work with smartphones, tablets, and data systems, the more I realize that no matter what precaution you take, if someone really wants to steal from you, they can…. You might be foolproof, but not everyone that you do business with….
The best way I found to deal with this is to assume your information has been already compromised, and plan to minimize the damage.
Social security numbers are a prime example. I dont bother trying to make it super secret anymore, because my social security number has already been breached many times. I can’t count how many times during the loan process, that my personal forms with my SSN was sent over email across different people… I can’t count how many times my SSN went across emails during a background check…And most recently, my full SSN appears in all my paperwork at the hospital i go to, including discharge papers/etc, where anyone at the hospital (nurses, doctors,etc) all can see… As a result, I don’t bother to really go out of my way to try to keep it a secret anymore…I just use a credit freeze and update the pin every so often.
I store bank statements, but not with the full account number.
And I don’t store unencrypted data files that are sensitive to the cloud. I use TrueCrypt, but some folks uses PGP. http://www.truecrypt.org/
For important data stuff…I create one or more virtual drive “image”, and backup those images to the cloud… So my backups to the cloud are actually truecrypt images, not individual files.
For really important stuff, I use some of features outlined here…
