Is this physical vault for passwords clever or just weird?

For most of us, a password manager is a perfectly acceptable way of keeping all your access codes in one-safe place. But for the people behind Vaulteq, this just isn’t secure enough.

That’s why they’ve come up with the world’s first plug n’ play password manager. In other words, they’ve made a physical vault for your passwords. Like what you’d put gold in, but without the epic fights involving men with murderous hats. 

According to its Indiegogo campaign, we’re all being misled to think that companies such as 1Password and Dashlane aren’t safe enough for us to entrust them to be the gatekeepers for our digital crown jewels.

“Cloud-based password managers replace one security problem with another and lack any real transparency over what’s happening to data and where it’s stored,” explains Frederik Derksen, co-founder and CEO of Vaulteq.

“We built Vaulteq because we wanted consumers to be able to keep their passwords and vital data secure, within reach, and always under their control. Vaulteq acts as your own personal vault that is stored in your home, where only you can access it.”

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I can completely understand the two-factor authentication that Vaulteq has built in to the device. I can see the merits in military grade encryption. I like the idea of a password generator built-in, so that you’re not taking your existing passwords and changing the last letter and number to make them ‘fool-proof’. 

But do you know what gets me? It’s the idea that something in your home is safer than something held somewhere else. Sure, cloud based security systems mean your data is stored in any number of locations around the world. You can’t walk into to a server centre and demand access to your digital stuff. But why would you need to?

It’s a bit like people not trusting banks with their cash – choosing instead to keep it under the mattress. Sure, it’s physically closer to you, but the chances of you being burgled compared to that of a multinational financial institution is well, ridiculous.

I applaud Vaulteq’s use of language to make people feel like cloud-based systems aren’t safe. Nearly every week at The Next Web we talk about a hack or loss of data from companies across the world.

But is the solution we pull all of our data out of the cloud to give us piece of mind? Or is it the job of companies we entrust our data with to ensure they’re not going to get robbed by the next digital desperado that walks into town?

You can make your own mind up.

➤ Vaulteq