What I do to keep my data safe

Photo by Belinda Fewings on Unsplash

Over the years, my husband and I have seen paperwork slowly switch to data. Now that we can keep everything digitally, our minimalist family tries to make the best of it, to gain space and weight from heavy boxes filled with papers, but also to make sure everything is easy to find at all times from anywhere since we move and travel a lot.

However, I’ve lost my fair share of important documents and photos. Some have everything lost in floods or fires, and some lose digital data forever, with zero chance of recovery.

It’s very important to be mindful of what you own. This means two things: that what you kept is relevant and precious to you and that you should pay even more attention to it.

Keeping in mind that 100% safety never exists, this is what we do to ensure that our data is as safe as it can be:

We use Norton on all our devices to avoid hacking risks.

It’s also a safe way to store our credit cards, passwords, and login info all in one place. It’s far more practical than a notebook. Passwords can be shared amongst family members too, which allows our (adult) children to have access to these passwords when they need them — not to mention that, as a couple, we can share login information when it is convenient for us to do so.

We “rent” a digital vault abroad.

In this safe, we can secure important documents such as medical files, IDs, taxes, bank info, diplomas, and more. In this safe, we can store our passwords and digital wallet, but it’s individually stored this time. This is great when you don’t feel like sharing some of your passwords with anyone else; this can be useful between adult children and parents.

This is the best way to have everything handy as we travel and move a lot. It has allowed us to reduce immensely our physical safe storage, which now resumes to a letter-size pouch for each member of the family, which is far from full. They are also easy to carry when we travel.

The vault also has an automatic synchronization on our computers, with secured logins. I know these are not 100% safe, but as I said, it’s a balance between what is likely to happen and what is not. However, we never make a…