KATONAH, N.Y. — Joseph Wolbromski gathered his wife and two small children and rushed them out of Poland in the summer of 1939 to escape the invasion by Adolf Hitler and Nazi soldiers.

The experience taught the late Wolbromski several important lessons that he passed along to his grandson, Eric Wolbrom.

"One lesson is that if you're prepared for anything, you can live through anything," said Wolbrom, 45, who has carved out a career in security.

He and a partner are building an Internet company called Information Survival LLC on the belief that when it comes to their personal information, people should be prepared for anything — including a fire, a flood or the loss of their wallet.

The Katonah, N.Y., company operates a Web site, www.keepyousafe.com, which allows users to store their personal information — such as credit card numbers, bank records and wills — online and access it from anywhere in the world. The overseas traveler who loses a passport, for instance, can go to the site from a cell phone or Internet cafe to retrieve a photo of the passport.

Information Survival, which started in 2006, also markets www.keepyousafe.com as a way for people to ensure that family members have access to their information. Wolbrom said one of his clients is a couple who left the United States on vacation and asked their son to check on their house while they were gone. During one of his daily visits, the son found pipes in his parents' basement had burst, causing a flood.

The son used the family's user name and password to find his parents' plumber and other maintenance contractors so that repairs could be made and the mess cleaned up.

Information Survival is not yet profitable. Wolbrom said "the great majority" of the 12,000 people who have opened accounts on the site are taking advantage of the company's free service, which offers only enough space for the user to store 10 records. The information on one credit card would constitute one record, Wolbrom said.

For $4 a month, a person can get an account large enough to hold 500 records.

Wolbrom and his partner, Scott Sanchez, of Philadelphia, are hoping the free service will generate enough hits to draw advertisers to the site. The business plan calls for the main source of revenue to be sales of the technology to businesses, Wolbrom said.

However, the thought of placing sensitive information on the Internet might make a lot of people queasy in an age when law enforcement agencies and consumer advocates bombard folks with warnings about the financial ruin that identity thieves can cause.

"We know it's a marketing challenge," Wolbrom said. "But we also know there are a lot of ways to protect yourself from identity theft, and we are working to make it even better."

They've taken a number of steps to convince their audience, including not storing customers' passwords and providing the same level of encryption for information as the U.S. military uses.

"We're crazy, paranoid people, and we don't want anyone else to worry," Wolbrom said.