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To use on our world trip, we store personal information (phone numbers, credit card information, id-scans, etc) on a small usb stick. To prevent losing this information to some malicious people, I encrypted all the data (with TrueCrypt)

On some machines (e.g. at my work), it is not permitted to use the software to decrypt the information. Is it possible in (most) internet cafes around the globe? Or is the security level of pc's too high?

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    I would not trust anything important to any Internet cafe computer anywhere in the world. A significant fraction of them are malware-ridden identity theft traps. Some of those are intentional.
    – Michael Hampton
    Commented Feb 20, 2017 at 8:25
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    I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because it belongs to SuperUser.SE
    – JonathanReez ♦
    Commented Feb 23, 2017 at 10:29

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TrueCrypt (unless it is already installed) requires administrator access to the computer. This will almost certainly be problematic. This even applies to the TrueCrypt Portable version. TrueCrypt is not designed to be run on non-trusted machines.

Instead of TrueCrypt, I recommend you use KeePass to store this data. It is built to handle string data (passwords) but can handle images as attachments and you can add custom fields to entries so it is suitable for any data.

One of the key features of KeePass is that it is portable. Meaning that the program itself can also live on the USB stick and does not need to be installed. The software even has built in protection from other software sniffing the memory it uses, making it much safer to use on untrusted computers than TrueCrypt.

For added safety, upload your KeePass file to a DropBox account (or similar) for easy access even if you lose your USB stick.

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  • thank you. Although I use TrueCrypt portable, it still asks for administrator login on some occasions to use it. I will check KeePass.
    – Joris
    Commented Jul 30, 2012 at 10:56
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    @Joris Here are some caveats about TrueCrypt Portable: truecrypt.org/docs/truecrypt-portable
    – Kris
    Commented Jul 30, 2012 at 10:59
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    I just want to confirm that KeePass is a very good solution to have your information protected and at the same time to have it available without much fuss. You could also have it on your smartphone, if you intend to take it along.
    – Paola
    Commented Jul 30, 2012 at 14:01

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