A lot of people suggest that as a backup, a person should photocopy their important travel documents like their passport, driver’s licence and credit cards and store this information away in a safe place as backup documentation. Normally, that would be a great idea except there are a couple of things everyone needs to be aware of. All photocopiers and many scanners have hard drives built into them to manipulate the images. But because they record information that is often sensitive or confidential in nature, companies like my own have policies in place to have the hard drives wiped or destroyed when a unit is recycled at the end of its useful life. NEVER photocopy your private confidential information on a public photocopier as you will have no control over how the information stored on the drive may be used, nor do you know if the information is eventually destroyed. Call me paranoid but people have stolen IDs off such machines.

Secondly, your photocopier may be smarter than you think. The newest units I have at work have smart sensing technology in them that will check to see if you are trying to photocopy money, passports, driver’s licences, birth certificates, cheques, bonds, stock certificates, bank drafts, etc. In fact, if I tried to do so, the photocopier would instantly LOCK and it would date-stamp the document and send a message to our IT people. OK OK, shades of Big Brother at work but at the same time it is a precautionary measure brought in to negate counterfeiting efforts. Never mind that my HR also requires a copy of my driver’s licence on my personnel file!

If you need to photocopy or scan your important documentation – you are best to do so on your home multi-function printer and keep your information physically secure.

If you don't have a personal scanner, another option is take pics by using your phone or digital camera. Then download the pics to your computer and generate a password-protected PDF, etc.

I'm paranoid, but I don't act upon all my paranoia. At every level, a criminal could one-up me if the criminal has sufficient motivation and time. So, once I reach a certain level of difficulty, I accept the risk and keep it moving.

Yup.