All Those Document Copies....Safe to carry?

I'm worried about how safe it is to carry copies of things like credit/visa cards with their security codes attached, bank account numbers, etc.

I already have to be worried about being pickpocketed, but if I carry copies in my bag, then losing the bag puts a lot of assets in danger.

For instance, I just jotted down some notes that would help me respond if I had my wallet stolen.

It has some credit card numbers, drivers liscense numbers, my debit card with security info, etc. I'm thinking I probably should not have this stuff on me, but it would certainly be helpful if I lost my wallet.

What exactly do you carry with you?

I don't think you need your credit card/debit card numbers to report them stolen. I mean, would you have that info on your if it got stolen at home? I think you can just tell the bank/credit card company your name and they can look up and cancel your card.

If you really do want to have all that info, I'd carry it in something like a money belt or secret pocket actually on you and not just your bag.

I agree that you don't need to carry that information with you. Just make a Word file with the phone numbers for your credit card(s) and email it to yourself.

I carry a copy of my passport in my money belt but like EMH I just have the other info on a file in my computer.

I email myself the company contact numbers and then memorize the credit card numbers, bank account numbers, etc.

There are a couple of programs—one from ISIC and the other from Lonely Planet that can help here. These programs are great because they allow you access to your information from any computer connected to the Internet (or in the case of ISIC—a touchtone phone). These solutions are secure because they employ encryption; therefore, you’re the only person who can access your information. Both of these services are based on the eKit platform—so are essentially similar .

Telesafe. ISIConnect offers ISIC members cyber storage for their valuable documents. It’s called ‘Telesafe’ and it’s a great alternative to photocopies as it provides secure virtual storage. You can retrieve documents via e-mail or touchtone phone anywhere in the world. What’s great about this service is that you do not require access to a computer should you need to retrieve your documents—you can print a copy using a touchtone phone and a fax machine.

Travel Vault. Lonely Planet offers a service similar to ‘Telesafe’ called the ‘Travel Vault’ which also allows you to store the details of your vital travel documents. What’s more, you can authorize Lonely Planet’s customer service to access them for you.

As others have said, you can create your own free ‘travel vault’ by scanning your important documents, saving each document as a .jpg or .gif file, and then emailing those files to yourself at a freely available webmail address (we recommend Google’s Gmail owing to its ease of use and storage capacity).

Ensure that the documents you emailed to yourself came through properly and store them on the server (ie don’t delete them—save them into a special folder). This option may not be as secure as some of the aforementioned services; however, it is free and should suit most people.

We've written some more stuff to consider before setting off a a round-the-world here.

Kate and Dan wrote:There are a couple of programs—one from ISIC and the other from Lonely Planet that can help here. These programs are great because they allow you access to your information from any computer connected to the Internet (or in the case of ISIC—a touchtone phone). These solutions are secure because they employ encryption; therefore, you’re the only person who can access your information. Both of these services are based on the eKit platform—so are essentially similar .

As others have said, you can create your own free ‘travel vault’ by scanning your important documents, saving each document as a .jpg or .gif file, and then emailing those files to yourself at a freely available webmail address (we recommend Google’s Gmail owing to its ease of use and storage capacity).

For free and secure, you can scan them into an encrypted PDF file and store it in your email. Actually this is probably the most secure option since, if you download anything to a public computer it may be recoverable, regardless of whether the hosting website is secure.

PDFCreator is a free program which can create encrypted PDFs (it sets up as a printer that you "print" your scanned images to and then you just have to set the options to turn encryption on.)