A new service giving the public the option to store important records securely online has been launched.

Keepyousafe.com is a digital 'safe deposit box' that allows people to store important personal information such as insurance policies, wills and financial and medical records online and view them via the internet.

The service, uses 256 bit encryption technology and as it bears the “hacker safe” mark - a US standard that claims websites using the logo meet the highest security scanning standards of the US Government and financial institutions such as Visa and MasterCard.

THe user can retrieve or access their records by logging on to the site and using the password they set, which the company claims not to keep a copy of on its servers. For this reason, users are advised by the company to make a note of the password and place it somewhere safe.

It is also left up to the user whether or not to give the password out to family members but currently unknown if records can be modified or changed.

People wanting to sign up for Keepyousafe.com must have a valid e-mail address.

The service, which gives the user 2MB of space is currently free to use, although there is a paid for version costing £18 ($36) per year, which gives 50 MB of storage.