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Comment by highwaylights | Hacker News Reader

This is only true if you’re very selective about which threats you want to acknowledge.

If someone breaks into my house I’d rather they just got my TV and some belongings rather than my life savings.

I'd wager that >99% of all burglaries are looking for physical possessions which can be sold for a quick buck. Not looking for random notebooks of passwords. So locking it in a safe might not be optimal because it will be like putting a spotlight on it.

Something like 90% of burglaries are looking for car keys. That's why I keep my keys by the front door in eyesight on anyone who comes in. I have insurance, and don't want a thug wandering around my house.

Now there’s a thought. Clever.

Does it make sense to also keep some decoy items, like an old MacBook in plain sight?

> Does it make sense to also keep some decoy items, like an old MacBook in plain sight?

I hope so. I always leave an old Macbook and iPhone in sight when leaving the house.

I have the opposite approach when parking my car in San Francisco, I just leave the doors unlocked so they don't smash my window. I don't mind if they want to rummage around and find nothing but some old taco bell napkins.

This reminds me of a quote from James Mickens regarding computer security.

"Unfortunately, large swaths of the security community are fixated on avant garde horrors such as the fact that, during solar eclipses, pacemakers can be remotely controlled with a garage door opener and a Pringles can. It’s definitely unfor- tunate that Pringles cans are the gateway to an obscure set of Sith-like powers that can be used against the 0.002% of the population that has both a pacemaker and bitter enemies in the electronics hobbyist community. However, if someone is motivated enough to kill you by focusing electromagnetic energy through a Pringles can, you probably did something to deserve that. I am not saying that I want you dead, but I am saying that you may have to die so that researchers who study per-photon HMACs for pacemaker transmitters can instead work on making it easier for people to generate good passwords."

My point being if someone's motivated enough to break into your house to steal your passwords in order to steal your life savings, that's probably an outside scenario, given most B&Es are junkies looking to score enough for their next high.

This is potentially a false equivalency. If storing passwords in a notebook is a common enough pattern, they become something a thief might start looking for. I don’t have the statistics, but would imagine that since “junkies” skew younger as a demographic, a good portion of them is computer literate (or knows someone who would be interested in buying accounts).

Most people are more at risk from bad passwords and website breaches than from home burglary.

> If someone breaks into my house I’d rather they just got my TV and some belongings rather than my life savings

I think this is very unlikely. For one, the notebook does not contain all the information - say "Bank1 Password" - which bank is that? What's the username? What about 2FA?

Secondly, surely the whole point if a safe is that it's bolted down and hard to burgle / steal?

fwiw I haven't ever been in a house with a bolted-down safe, nor am I aware of anyone I know ever having one.

they exist but uh. most people just have portable fire-safe boxes as far as I've seen. or nothing.

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