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Ask HN: How should I store important documents (IDs, etc.) in the cloud?

3 points by iLoveOncall ↗ HN
Hi,

I've been scanning a lot of personal sensitive documents such as IDs, banking information, etc. in order to have backups available easily, and I have been wondering about the best way to securely store this information in the cloud.

The main requirements, in order of importance (in my mind at least) would be:

1. Security. Even if my cloud account is compromised the data itself should not be accessible without entering a second password.

2. Availability. It should be accessible from a computer but also a phone or any other (i)device.

3. Not limited to storing sensitive data. I should be able to have in the same service some other documents that I don't care about having "stolen" such as some random ebook or video that I wanted to backup. It means that it should have a high storage capacity available for a reasonable price.

Right now my best idea is to store a file encrypted via VeraCrypt on any generic cloud storage such as Dropbox, but it causes issues with availability.

Thanks for your suggestions!

6 comments

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dewey
I just put them in 1Password. It syncs everywhere and is probably more secure than what I could come up myself. If I need to access something I could quickly get it anywhere through my phone, which would be a lot more hassle if I use some encrypted cloud storage volume.
iLoveOncall
Unbelievably 1 year of password manager is more expensive than 1 year of 100GB storage in a cloud provider.

It also doesn't really fit #1 because if my master password is compromised I'm fucked.

dewey
That’s not really a comparison that makes sense.

Providing raw storage is of course a lot cheaper than a password manager with apps on various platforms and security audits.

i67vw3
You can use cryptomator https://cryptomator.org/. It is similar to veracrypt, but is specifically made for users to encrypt and upload encrypted to cloud.

It is also recommended by these guys:- https://privacyguides.org/software/productivity/#encrypt https://www.privacytools.io/#encryption https://cloudstorageinfo.org/cryptomator-review

My suggestion:- Use cryptomator to encrypt very important files on a cloud storage you use for day-to-day activity, eg- dropbox, google drive etc. And the non-important files can stay unencrypted like they normally would.

iLoveOncall
Ah this looks pretty good however I don't mount the drives on my local computer, I feel it would defeat a lot of the purpose of having a separate backup.

EDIT: Nevermind, this is perfect, thanks!