A safe deposit box, also incorrectly called a safety deposit box is an individually secured container, usually held within a larger safe or bank vault. Safe deposit boxes are generally located in banks, post offices or other institutions. Safe deposit boxes are used to store valuable possessions, such as gemstones, precious metals, currency, marketable securities, important documents such as wills, property deeds, and birth certificates, or computer data storage that need protection from theft, fire, flood, tampering or other reasons. In the typical arrangement, a renter pays the bank a fee for the use of the box, which can be opened only with production of an assigned key, the bank's own guard key, the proper signature, and perhaps a code of some sort. Some banks additionally use biometric dual-control security to complement the conventional security procedures.
Many hotels, resorts and cruise ships offer safe deposit boxes or small safes for their patrons.
The contents of safe deposit boxes may be seized under the legal theory of abandoned property.
Famous quotes containing the words safe, deposit and/or box:
“What the hell is nostalgia doing in a science-fiction film? With the whole universe and all the future to play in, Lucas took his marvelous toys and crawled under the fringed cloth on the parlor table, back into a nice safe hideyhole, along with Flash Gordon and the Cowardly Lion and Luck Skywalker and the Flying Aces and the Hitler Jugend. If there’s a message there, I don’t think I want to hear it.”
—Ursula K. Le Guin (b. 1929)
“A real life, a life that leaves a deposit in the shape of something alive.... It’s difficult to say what makes a life a real life.... You could also say it depends on a person being identical with himself.”
—Max Frisch (1911–1991)
“I shall return in the dark and be seen,
Be led to my own room by well-intentioned hands,
Placed in a box with a lid whose underside is dark
So as to grow....”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)