How to travel alone: Have a Back-up Plan for your Travel Documents
When traveling alone, your personal safety, that of your body, is your number one priority. I have written about this in many ways in the Solo Travel Safety category. Number two is your travel documents. Yes, in my books, money only ranks third. Your travel documents – your passport, visas, travel insurance, credit card information, driver’s license and any important health information – are vitally important in these times of health scares and tighter security at borders.
There are many options for your backup plan. From low tech to high tech, here are a few:
1. Copy your documents and give them to friends or family to hold at home.
2. Keep a copy of your documents in the bottom of your suitcase or pack.
3. Scan your documents and keep them on a USB key stored separately from your actual documents.
4. Scan them into a Google doc or email the scans to yourself.
5. Use AccessMyId.com
There are downsides to most of these options. You have to reach the person holding your documents at home and then they have to find them. You might lose your luggage making the copies or USB key you hid away useless. In fact, they might be worse than useless because your personal information is now available to strangers. Google docs gives you access to your documents via computer, but the security of Google docs is not that great given the value of the information you’re storing. Likewise, emails are not secure. This leads me to the last option – a new discovery for me – AccessMyID.com.
Travel documents Secure in the sky with AccessMyID.com
AccessMyID.com is a subscription service for storing all your travel documents, medical information and travel itinerary securely online. Naturally, you have access to it 24/7.
I really like the levels of security offered by AccessMyID.com. You sign in with a username and password. From there, you are taken to a page for further verification where you answer one of three questions chosen at sign up and complete a “captcha” to ensure that a person is signing in, not an automated system. Furthermore, every time you log in, you receive an email confirming that you have logged in. If it wasn’t you, the breach can be dealt with immediately.
I’ve revealed my fear of losing my travel documents in a number of posts. It’s my one concern as I travel solo. This is a service I plan to use.
My appreciation goes to AccessMyID.com for supporting Solo Traveler, providing two subscriptions as prizes in the photo contest that is currently underway and allowing me to test drive their service.






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