Some of you may have seen the clip on the news last evening - "Protecting Your Digital Afterlife." It focused on one family's inability to access their father's online business account after he suffered a series of strokes. Yahoo would not allow them to access it and the business failed without their ability to access their father's online business records.
Yahoo is not the only company that does that. Information on how other online companies handle your accounts after death/disability can be found here. (iCloud, Dropbox, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, and more.)
Recently I gave some advice to my cousin who runs the family farm, "You really should make a list of all your online accounts and passwords, put them in a folder, and tell your family and the hired hand where that folder is located. You might even want to get a red folder to make it easy to spot."
Well....I'm much better at giving advice than always following it, so watching the news clip yesterday reminded me that very soon I need to:
1) make a list of all my online accounts including usernames and passwords - banking, medical, financial accounts, Facebook, Gmail and other email accounts, etc.
2) choose a location and tell my family where the information/folder is located. And, I probably should remind them of it from time to time.
3) remember to update the list every time I change passwords or create new online accounts.
I do not recommend sending a copy of your information via email for two reasons: 1) email is not secure and private and 2) you will need to update the document from time to time and you don't want multiple copies of out-of-date information lying around.
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