A New Year, have you thought about Death and Passwords?

By Dale Taylor (Intel)

Earlier this year one of my friends was killed in a small plane accident. His family still does not have access to his email and Facebook accounts. To send messages they post to his wall for other of his “Friends” to see.

So much of our lives are now online. In the event something happens, who will know where or how to pay your bills? Where your critical documents are? How about paperless accounts that might have assets to manage? With a new year just hours away I want to mention briefly that we all need to consider just how to pass along our critical information to others in case something happens to us. Consider that one of the most critical last words you could say might just be your password!

There are many ways to pass along password information to others. I use encrypted documents to keep all of my online records safe, so having the key to the encryption method I use is very critical or nothing can be accessed. Easiest of course is to simply share the information with a trusted companion or family member. The issue of account access is additionally complicated when you include Wills and other issues you wish to make known to family members.

To help address these concerns there are many methods available. I’ll include a sample below to show a few companies that have ways you can automate the process.

www.legacylocker.com Once notified of your demise via an official death certificate, Legacy Locker will contact people whose names you’ve provided. You can divide up who gets what information and thus send different account information or assets to different beneficiaries. It’s free to have one beneficiary and up to three assets. It’s $29.99 a year for unlimited beneficiaries and assets.

For quicker access to your assets, you can setup an email based system.

www.deathswitch.com uses periodic e-mails based on a schedule you set up. If you fail to respond to an e-mail after a certain period of time, Death Switch delivers e-mails you’ve prepared in advance to the person you’ve designated. You control the timing and messaging so consider offline scenarios such as a hospital visit before you send out messaging presuming death. There is no charge for the basic service. To send multiple e-mails, you pay $19.95 a year for up to 30 e-mails with attachments.

http://www.assetlock.net uses a system where several of your friends need to log in to confirm your passing. Once the critical number has been reached a time delay is triggered after which your information will be released as you scheduled and determined.

As you can see, there are many ways to manage your documents. Some banks also offer critical document storage methods too. The key to all of this is to plan for and determine in advance how you would like your affairs to be managed in the case of some type of critical event or death.