Email Security
 

Folks, I have a question about email security.

Hugh R's wallet loss story caused me to once again xerox the contents of my wallet, for safety's sake. (Since we have a new copier, I actually just scanned them as PDF's)

My question is, how best to store PDF's of these on the web? Can I trust gmail security and my password enough to just mail them to myself and put them in a 'secret' folder? or should I maybe make a google doc that only I have access to?

It would be nice to have access to the numbers, but if the brain trust here at Pelican think that would be a dumb idea, I'll just put hard copies in a secure place and call a friend to retrieve them in case of a loss, but jeez, it would be great to have web access to them when I'm traveling.. .

I use a mac by the way, not a PC.

I went hard copies...but I'm silly that way...

PDFs can be made to require a password to open them. Not sure if that option is open when you create a PDF from a scanner.

Unfortunately, there is also a tool called PDF Password Recovery that will unlock the pdf. So damned if you do, damned if you don;t

To add some protection, encrypt the pdf file. On a Mac, open up your PDF file in "Preview" and choose File --> Save As.... Then, click on the Encrypt checkbox. Enter a password for the file and save it.

Now, put that file somewhere safe.

Super idea! Thanks, Paul.