Would putting important information on a flash drive that never touches the internet be secure?

Question

First off, I'm not even sure if this question belongs on this site, but I am a programmer and I usually just ask stack overflow questions like this, and I know for a fact this one doesn't belong there.

But basically, my question is if I get a flash drive, and only ever attach it to say a Raspberry pi 0 (the one without internet connectivity), and put information that I really don't want people to get their hands on (like for example, social security number), would that basically be as secure as just having it written on a sheet of paper?

Because I don't super want it written down because I feel like if someone breaks in or something, it would be a lot easier to determine what it was if it was written down on a piece of paper, but at the same time I don't want to put that information on anything that connects to the internet on the tiny off chance that the device gets compromised.

sorry if this question doesn't really fit this website, but if it doesn't I would appreciate someone being able to point me to somewhere where it would fit.

Answer 1

The technical answer is yes, as long as nobody just steals the USB flash drive. You can mitigate that with full-disk encryption, but I don't think people breaking into your house are going to be looking for your SSN anyway - they're much more interested in taking the most expensive objects they can carry out by hand and easily fence.

One issue with storing this information on USB flash disks is that they have poor retention. They're not particularly reliable for long-term backup storage, and you should expect some degradation in the data after a year or two.

For something as not-that-sensitive as your SSN, I would recommend just storing it in your password manager. A local one like KeePass offers plenty of security. You should be using one anyway for your passwords.