On April 19, everyone in the United States aged 16 and over becomes eligible for a meeting with the COVID-19 vaccine. Once you are caught, you will receive a 3-inch, 4-inch old school paper card as proof of immunization status. You can protect that piece of cardboard by sticking it in a cheap badge holder * (Amazon sells a pack of 10 with resealable zipper for $ 10), but that doesn’t rule out the possibility of losing it or losing it directly.
You should have a digital copy as a backup. And do it good one: it should be clear, sharp and easy to read. You may need this as proof of vaccination or as a way to remember your meeting details when trying to replace a lost card. And because your vaccination card displays sensitive personal information that can be used for identity theft, a digital version should also be kept safe.
To accomplish this, here’s what you should (and shouldn’t!) Do.
* Note: Currently, experts do not recommend laminating the physical card yet, as you may need to add annotations of future booster photos along the way.
Do: use a good application
Smartphone photos work perfectly for digitizing your vaccination card. To get a good catch, take it in a well-lit area on a flat surface, preferably placed on a simple, dark background. (It will make it easier to get a clean crop without cutting too many edges.)
Your phone’s default camera app will work well for taking pictures, but for automatic cropping, lens distortion correction, plus color and exposure correction, download and use a dedicated scanning app. Scanning applications also offer the advantage of saving files in PDF format. We like Adobe Scan (Android, iOS; login required) or Evernote Scanable (iOS).
You can, of course, take photos with a camera or scanner, for greater control over how the file is stored. Free programs such as GIMP (Win, MacOS) or Paint.net (Windows) can handle the necessary image corrections for a clear and bright image.
Do: back up this digital copy
Like paper cards, digital files can be lost. (Usually by accidental deletion.) Back up your backup to save your potential headaches along the way.
Now, most people will email themselves a copy of the file to do this – but we recommend uploading your photos to a cloud service or saving them locally to your computer. Cloud storage from major services (Google, Apple, Dropbox, Microsoft) uses encryption both at rest and in transit, while on-premises storage gives you full control over your data (including the ability to encrypt it) . In contrast, email providers do not universally encrypt emails and email attachments.
If your smartphone photos are automatically uploaded to a cloud storage service, you should be covered. But it’s not bad, for example, to upload these files to Google Drive, even if Google Photos has automatic backups enabled. It’s easier to accidentally delete photos with the latest app. The same concept applies if you’re on an Apple device – upload to a folder in Files, even if Camera Roll uses iCloud backups.
No: Share with third parties (yet)
Wait to upload the scanned card to websites or applications that advertise to serve as digital vaccine registration safe services. We do not yet know exactly how the vaccine cards will be used to check the state of immunization, nor how quickly healthcare providers and the government will coordinate to create digital vaccination databases. Given the frequency with which data breaches occur, keep this type of personal information to yourself until it is clear exactly what government agencies (including those governing travel) and vaccination proof companies will need and in what format.
Do it: close your accounts
If your smartphone photos are automatically backed up to the cloud, make sure that account is secured with at least one strong password. We also recommend that you enable two-factor authentication as the second layer of protection for your connection. It takes less than ten minutes to add both to a Google or Apple account (or any major service you use to save photos), and tracking them is easy if you use a password manager (some of which have tokens). 2FA built-in generators).
Why add such complexity to a photo? Store sensitive personally identifiable information on a server. If someone has access to the file, it will only take a few seconds for it to explode on the wider internet. This also applies to other files saved in the cloud.
Perform: Enable encryption on your phone
In addition to tightening your accounts, phone security also matters – whether your photos are backed up to the cloud. Encrypting your phone storage protects you if your device is lost or stolen.
To enable encryption, you usually need to create a password or password for your phone. You can add a biometric method to unlock your phone to make the security feature less difficult. If you’re already using a password or password on your phone, you can check your encryption settings by going to Settings and navigating to Security> Advanced in most Android phones and FaceID and access code (or TouchID and password) for iPhone.