Saving important documents in 1Password

@1PassMicha I started digitizing my bureaucratic life about 10 years ago. I scanned everything from childhood to current time. May be more than you intend to do, but I decided to digitize every paper invoice and document no matter how trivial, as well as collect every digital invoice and document all at some central point for organization and retrieval.

1Password is not suited for this. It has a secure storage, but it isn't a document storage and retrieval system. It's not possible to search within the attached documents, which is crucial for document management. In 1Password, I store collected information I'm supposed to enter in websites more or less often, or that I have to refer to in correspondence.

But for archival and storing the original documents, I chose OneNote with its storage in Microsoft Onedrive (I started with the standalone version of OneNote, but I moved the files to Onedrive for sharing purposes).
In OneNote, you're able to create file hierarchies much like a filing cabinet with file folders and pages within the folder.
So I created sections like work, bank, household, tax, insurances, apartment.
Within the sections I created subsections for every employer I worked for under work, for every bank account and credit card under bank, receipts, telephone, magazine subscriptions, correspondence, car, medicine/doctor under household, all kind of governmental financial stuff under tax, all my insurances under insurances and all bureaucratic stuff about my apartment under apartment.

Within these subsections, I created one page for every correspondence or item to store. Titled with the date that item arrived and a short description, and the content is the scanned jpg images of all the document pages. Scanned as images, one image per page. Directly pasted as visible image, not as file attach. Not as pdf, because you need to open a pdf to read it. If you paste as image, it's directly there if you open the OneNote page. It's also OCR'd by OneNote and you can globally search for everything.

Search and retrieval is much more clumsy if you keep the files as pdf.

With digital stuff such as email invoices, I copy+paste the emails as page in OneNote. If there were pdf invoices attached, I attach the pdf as file attach to keep the original and additionally "print" it to the OneNote printer to have it directly in view like the scanned images for paper documents.
It's extremely easy and fast to navigate through the whole notebook. You never need to open documents with a clumsy pdf viewer to check what's in it.

The whole Onenote notebook is about 5 gig. That's way larger than anything you are able to store in 1Password. It fits on my smartphone and on my tablet, so I'm able to carry it with me all the time.

Example view: Sorry it's in German, however that's the way it is.

Hello Former Member

Thanks for your detailed tips, they are really professional!

It's nice for me to see your example view in German, because this is my native language ;)

Your suggestions sound very reasonable, even if they would mean a bigger initial effort for me. However, already in the short & medium term the advantages are evident for me & especially for future new documents or similar.

I'm currently thinking that it would be important for me to encrypt everything uploaded to OneDrive with Cryptomator https://cryptomator.org.

I already use Cryptomator successfully & as very user-friendly. Nothing can go wrong with it because I have all the vault passwords conveniently stored in 1Password.

1PassMicha ... :)

@1PassMicha I don't use any additional cloud encryption software because of the added complexity. It bears the risk you lose everything, if the encryption software fails. It also thwarts the reason I use the cloud in the first place: sharing the files with all my devices, and usually encryption software is not available for all of them.

If it comes to my OneNote example, you cannot use encryption software for cloud-stored OneNote notebooks, because you never see the database files. It's accessed via some Onedrive API to allow realtime syncing (if you type something on one device, it will appear immediately on all other devices).

If it comes to cloud storage in general, I use it as it is offered. If it comes without end-to-end encryption, I either don't use it at all or use it without end-to-end encryption. In case of Onedrive, chose to accept it as it is and use it without end-to-end encryption. I don't really care for robots scanning my uploaded data for whatever. It's clear there are taboo files because of that, for example private holiday pictures that contain nudity. That's stuff that simply cannot be cloud stored, it's taboo.

It's a flaw of today's cloud storage services and severely lowers the value of such services, and if I could have end-to-end encryption at an additional price, I would pay it. However I will not use clumsy addon software to patch that in. That's too risky, and it's not clear if that addon software even lowers security because of bugs instead of increasing it.

Former Member

I see it a bit different than you, but I don't know if you are an advanced computer user?

I think the risk of an encryption software failure is extremely low & even then, you still have options if you are an advanced user.

It is just important to me to store sensitive documents encrypted in the cloud. Cryptomator is effortless to use & to understand & the only thing you have to pay a lot of attention to, which 1Password is perfect for, is never losing your passwords for your drives!

1PassMicha ... :)

@1PassMicha That special encryption software might work for you, however I learnt that a pretty UI and the fact that software is open source alone isn't enough to make the whole process secure. Your whole environment. Every component is only one small part. You as the user are the most important part, the part that has the most impact on security - how you act in and navigate through the networks. Software cannot repair what you as a user do.

I consider myself an advanced user indeed, because I worked with IT my whole life and make my living with it. There was one day years ago where I had to decide to either refuse all networked stuff and keep everything local as it was previously, staying at that development status. Or to join the cloud stuff and networked stuff and gain all the benefits and development of modern IT.

I decided to join the cloud and all modern stuff, including social media. I not only joined the cloud, I also joined the crowd, the mainstream. I observe how security is supposed to be handled by the mainstream, and I apply my best practice from this best practice. This is, in my opinion, the best way to minimize risks by at the same time have all the convenience and service modern IT is able to provide.

That kind of encryption software you mentioned is not a part of this.

It's difficult to explain why, but I assume I have an educated judgement in this topic. Often, you make great efforts to secure a small part of your environment up to 100%, while some aspect you don't see still opens great security risks much more severe than the parts you secure. So you have to see your whole environment, not just that cloud storage. And if you see your whole digital environment, end-to-end encryption of your cloud storage instead of just "at rest" encryption as in Onedrive isn't important enough to justify that effort to make you depend on that encryption software.

If you're someone who has important data for a company or community to keep secure, so you might be a target for attacks, this might be different for you, but if you're just just unimportant person in the crowd as I, it is how I see it. Be vigilant, but don't be paranoid. You're not being haunted. The crowd is being haunted, and to stay secure apply best practice for the crowd.

Former Member thanks for your very valuable hints, they show me your profound knowledge!

Of course: The overall security of a complex IT configuration is as a chain only as secure as its weakest link! 

Every IT user has different priorities & I have found a way to combine acceptable security with maximum possible comfort. That's why I will continue to use Cryptomator, for example, even if you advise me against it. 

We should get back to the thread topic here! My actual question regarding loss security of documents stored in 1Password etc. has not really been answered yet!

1PassMicha ... :)

Hello all,

since I have not yet received a proper answer, my question was also meant somewhat symbolically ;) ... I'll try to answer it myself:

As a paying customer of 1Password, I must have absolute trust in 1Password because I trust 1Password with my most confidential & important data ... I assume that important documents stored in 1Password are as secure as my stored log-ins & the like!

Nevertheless, I will still back up irreplaceable documents & the like on an encrypted USB stick as well. It's always good to have at least two backups for critical things. For example, I have a triple backup set up for my entire IT configuration.

1PassMicha ... :)

Hi @1PassMicha,

As a paying customer of 1Password, I must have absolute trust in 1Password because I trust 1Password with my most confidential & important data ... I assume that important documents stored in 1Password are as secure as my stored log-ins & the like!

That's correct, all items (files/documents/logins) stored in 1Password are equally safe and secure! However, it should be noted that there are some limits to the size of documents and amount of storage included with a 1Password account.

While it's certainly nice to have all those files in one safe place, storing an extra copy on any encrypted drive, isn't a terrible idea either. :)

Hello @ag_mike_d,

I have one more question:

Is it possible to access the documents stored in 1Password even if no internet connection is available? Or is an internet connection mandatory?

1PassMicha ... :)

Hello again @1Passmicha,

Once the your items have been synced to a device from 1Password.com, a cached version of the database is saved within 1Password. You'll be able access the data from the cached database, when an internet connection is not available.