Not content with only protecting your physical assets, Wells Fargo has announced it will begin offering online safe deposit boxes of sorts to protect your virtual assets. Called Wells Fargo vSafe, the service can store any standard file format, from word documents, PDFs, audio, and video files. Wells Fargo says birth certificate copies, wills, corporate documents, or even just home movies are all fair game to store in a vSafe in case of natural disaster or a hard drive failure.
Of course, because Wells Fargo is a bank, there will be a monthly fee to maintain your vSafe when the service is introduced this summer. A monthly fee of $4.95 will get a 1 GB vSafe, $9.95 a month for 3 GB, or $14.95 for 6 GB. That may seem like a lot considering that companies like Microsoft offer Internet storage space for free. Wells Fargo asserts that the security measures in place to protect your virtual assets will warrant the cost of admission.
A secure online storage space seems like a good idea, but I'm not fully sure if I'd personally trust it. I'm not inclined to think that any information on the internet is completely secure and can't be lost, but if Wells Fargo can prove me wrong then the vSafe could be a great option for back-ups of important documents. Until then I'll use strong encryption and back up my vital files locally.
I think trusted names like Banks or Insurance companies could help people feel safer about online storage or even identity protection. This seems like a good idea. I work with scanR - we are not working with Wells Fargo - scanR lets you scan/copy a paper document with your phone... this would be a good way to make digital copies of things like birth certificates and then store them in a virtual safety deposit box.