How do you save your confidential files?

[arnprasad]

Hi..after using computers for 20+ years feel a bit weird asking this question. Here is my predicament:

For me there are broadly three types of files/information which are invaluable - (a) Home Photos and Videos (b) personal files like ID scans (adhar,vote,PAN., licence.etc), Investment/Property scans (PDFs)..etc.

Currently I have backups on dumb drives like External Hard Drives without any passwords like Bitlocker and also few on Google Drive. ( I pay 130 pm for 100 gigs)

Regarding sensitivity - (a) Home video and pictures which is 50GB+ - not exactly sensitive and hence even if someone has access - nothing much to lose - So while I like to have this password protected - I am ok to save it on a external drive without protection (b) all my text level info like usernames, passwords and other sensitive info is on an Excel file with a password and hence relatively secure (c) Its the third category of ID card scans, Property scans..etc which are currently saved on multiple computers and hard drives for which I need help.

The reason is simple - (a) We could say lose a hard drive in a public place or say there is a house break in - all they have to do is plug in the hard drive and they got a copy of say all my sensitive files. (b) But the one incident that triggered a mini panic situation was when these files were stored on one of my desktop and when I gave a desktop to my neighbourhood last week - when I went to check on the progress - I could see that while reinstalling windows, all my drives were visible to him and I a hoping he didnt take a back up

I can think of two solutions:

(a) On all hard drives - use bitlocker as password so that even if I lose it - no one can access these files. I am hoping that even if someone were to take out the hard drive itself - it would still be password protected. While this solution makes sense of for one master hard drive which is in a safe someplace - I do have few hard drive which have files on them which I am guessing cannot be easily accessed if I use bit locker - (i) I have downloaded Nintendo Wii games which gets connected to a Wii via USB and I can play games of it (its a hacked wii) (ii) I have audio and video files and say I use Kodi to access it across multiple desktops/laptop at home.

(b) For the scanned PDFs and Images - I can save them in MS Office documents as objects and save that file with a password. I have done this for 2-3 files inside one Excel file but I have not tried it for tens of files. This is again relatively secure. So say I open one worksheet called investment and I save say 7-8 PDF files. The second worksheet called education can have all my scanned qualification certificates, a third worksheet I can call passport......like this and I can eventually save this Excel file itself with a password. The question I have is whether Excel has any limitation in terms of how much such files can I embed as objects - I just googled and someone said pdfs cannot be stored this way in Excel - they become .bin file or something like that.

I am not sure if I am over complicating my life - but the logic is simple - I want all physical papers in life to be in electronic form and saved in multiple places for easy access and also say I save all my important physical papers in a bank locker since very rarely is the actual document needed.

How do you manage such situations in life - Like I mentioned above - this computer repairing guy having access and also inadvertently losing hard drives given between my house and relative houses - I got some 7-8 of them lying around is giving me nightmares.

 

[superczar]

Hi..after using computers for 20+ years feel a bit asking this question. Here is my predicament:

For me there are broadly three types of files/information which are invaluable - (a) Home Photos and Videos (b) personal files like ID scans (adhar,vote,PAN., licence.etc), Investment/Property scans (PDFs)..etc.

Currently I have backups on dumb drives like External Hard Drives without any passwords like Bitlocker and also few on Google Drive. ( I pay 130 pm for 100 gigs)

Regarding sensitivity - (a) Home video and pictures which is 50GB+ - not exactly sensitive and hence even if someone has access - nothing much to lose - So while I like to have this password protected - I am ok to save it on a external drive without protection (b) all my text level info like usernames, passwords and other sensitive info is on an Excel file with a password and hence relatively secure (c) Its the third category of ID card scans, Property scans..etc which are currently saved on multiple computers and hard drives for which I need help.

The reason is simple - (a) We could say lose a hard drive in a public place or say there is a house break in - all they have to do is plug in the hard drive and they got a copy of say all my sensitive files. (b) But the one incident that triggered a mini panic situation was when these files were stored on one of my desktop and when I gave a desktop to my neighbourhood last week - when I went to check on the progress - I could see that while reinstalling windows, all my drives were visible to him and I a hoping he didnt take a back up

I can think of two solutions:

(a) On all hard drives - use bitlocker as password so that even if I lose it - no one can access these files. I am hoping that even if someone were to take out the hard drive itself - it would still be password protected. While this solution makes sense of for one master hard drive which is in a safe someplace - I do have few hard drive which have files on them which I am guessing cannot be easily accessed if I use bit locker - (i) I have downloaded Nintendo Wii games which gets connected to a Wii via USB and I can play games of it (its a hacked wii) (ii) I have audio and video files and say I use Kodi to access it across multiple desktops/laptop at home.

(b) For the scanned PDFs and Images - I can save them in MS Office documents as objects and save that file with a password. I have done this for 2-3 files inside one Excel file but I have not tried it for tens of files. This is again relatively secure. So say I open one worksheet called investment and I save say 7-8 PDF files. The second worksheet called education can have all my scanned qualification certificates, a third worksheet I can call passport......like this and I can eventually save this Excel file itself with a password. The question I have is whether Excel has any limitation in terms of how much such files can I embed as objects - I just googled and someone said pdfs cannot be stored this way in Excel - they become .bin file or something like that.

I am not sure if I am over complicating my life - but the logic is simple - I want all physical papers in life to be in electronic form and saved in multiple places for easy access and also say I save all my important physical papers in a bank locker since very rarely is the actual document needed.

How do you manage such situations in life - Like I mentioned above - this computer repairing guy having access and also inadvertently losing hard drives given between my house and relative houses - I got some 7-8 of them lying around is giving me nightmares.

My suggestion- Don’t overcomplicate things - If you are on iOS/ Mac, Enable two factor authentication on icloud and you are all set.

If you are on google/windows , am sure something similar and secure should be available there too

 

[arnprasad]

Thanks I need to understand this better. Say I got a SSD which has my OS and say I got a hard drive with the files (desktop) - Need to ensure the hard drive is encrypted so that even if it goes for repair people cannot access the files. Also will your solution apply for external hard drives?

 

[Deepak123]

Microsoft have Personal Vault in Onedrive, have a look.

OneDrive Personal Vault brings added security to your most important files and OneDrive gets additional storage options

OneDrive Personal Vault—a new layer of security—is coming to your OneDrive personal account. Also, now you can store more with the OneDrive 100 GB plan at no additional charge.

www.microsoft.com

When you try to open Vault folder, it sends a security code to your registered mail, like 2-factor authorization.
I use Onedrive for storage but not Vault !!!

 

[narayan_s]

(b) all my text level info like usernames, passwords and other sensitive info is on an Excel file with a password and hence relatively secure

Please don't use password protected excel files for keeping login account details, it can be easily cracked given some time (brute force). And if the file itself is not encrypted then even easier.

If you use bitlocker then your data on the computer's drives will be inaccessible to the repair guys, unless you also give them your computer password.

If you are using a non local account (as in a microsoft account) and you give them your computer pin/password, they can even access your bitlocker key from your microsoft live account for use later.

So when ever you give your computer for repair expect that you are going to lose all data on local drive and wipe the drive clean before giving it for repair.


For your important files you can use any of the third party encryption software for local storage
if you choose to store those on cloud look for a service that guarantees that the files are encrypted

Lastly use a password manager like 1password to make sure you do not reuse passwords across sites. this way you do not have to rely on password protect excel files