Nothing is 100% secure, but I have opted for a high-quality gun/fire safe that's bolted to the foundation of my home (in a gated community), and protected by multiple monitored alarm systems and cameras. The safe has a lot more room than any bank's box would, it's cheaper in the long-run, and IMHO (especially after reading the fine article) more secure. Also, it's got a S&G spin-dial lock that I trust a lot more than…
Someone with a gun can still force you to open it.
How do you access the cloud if you lost your laptop? Or even all of your stuff burned down along with your house? How do you remember a strong passphrase after four months in hospital recovering from a cerebral trauma? Emergency emergencies. Off-site physical backups are important too.
You don't need to particularly safeguard the credentials to get to your encrypted blob, they can be in a gmail email you sent to your friends and/or family. They can't read the content but they can give you a copy. How do you remember where your safe deposit box is after four months in hospital recovering from a cerebral trauma? There's no perfect solution.
Engrave the address into the lens of a laser pointer, and embed the pointer into your hip.
Someone with a gun can still force you to open it.
You need a second "honeypot" safe to handle that sotuation.
I keep only semi-valuable documents in the honeypot safe. Things like flex spending account receipts, password to my personal github account, and free car-wash vouchers.
You need a second "honeypot" safe to handle that sotuation.
I keep only semi-valuable documents in the honeypot safe. Things like flex spending account receipts, password to my personal github account, and free car-wash vouchers.
I think, you should remove the car wash vouchers, if serious.
I believed your safe could be real, until I read that heh.
While I wouldn't put things that could single-handedly grant access in there - since you likely won't be checking on if it's been compromised that frequently - I think it's still great for things like backup 2FA codes or recovery passwords for encrypted media that's stored separately. Make breaking into the box one of the things an attacker would need to do. I would not put my life savings in jewelry or something in…
Best normal option is a locked container with a relative. In scenarios where there is a particular risk or a lot of money potentially involved, store important documents with an attorney.
Having seen the number of attorneys (even - no, especially - at the partner level) who leave their computers unlocked and who push back against measures like 2FA, if the document is high enough value, please spend some time vetting them first.
This is an absurd take. What would you have them do aside from call out a publicly bad actor explicitly? Seems like you are bending over backwards for a bad take.
In the media you don't get to "just" call someone or a company out. It inevitably makes the readers imagine comparisons in their mind. It is a status play: by lowering the status of one player in an industry, you implicitly raise the the status of the others. Everyone who works in the media industry knows that will happen -- and I know some people who work in that industry. Even teenagers do this on social media all…
> by lowering the status of one player in an industry, you implicitly raise the the status of the others.
The relative status ye. But the absolute status of banks as a group decline.
E.g. used cars salesmen. A honest one's reputation are ruined from the moment they open the store due to bad actors.
I pay about $400/year for $1.5 million in commercial property liability insurance for a small office space. And the risk of somebody "slipping" and collecting $1.5 million is far, far more likely. Every time you drive your car or bicycle you take the risk of running over a star athlete or CEO, and facing a $10 million judgement on lost earnings. Anyhow, banks will typically require liability disclaimers from deposit…
> I'm guessing the real reason for not wanting these deposit boxes is the same reason banks are shedding branch staff--labor is costly; It's because most business schools teach business administrators to seek rent for doing nothing. Making anything, providing any service or really doing anything other than pure rent seeking is an opportunity to be beaten by those who care enough to do it better and so should be avoid…
> It's because most business schools teach business administrators to seek rent for doing nothing.
To be fair, renting out metal boxes you already own doesn't exactly sound labour-intensive.
> One day that Bank will close for the night and not reopen for quite a while if at all. Are you talking about Fridays? Or something else?
There are lots of instances where Banks and/or other financial institutions close for the night 'as usual', but then never reopen. What happens to all those accounts that are never able to be accessed again by their 'owners'? Examples: Lehmann Brothers in New York, Pyramid in Australia, that Scottish bank in England some 10 years back, Barings Bank, etc, etc. And there was also the Savings and Loan fiasco in the US a…
> "What happens to all those accounts that are never able to be accessed again by their 'owners'?"
It's not an issue on the United States. Many countries have similar insurance programs