Article in Tampa Bay Newspaper

I came across two great articles. I will cover one of these today and another in tomorrow's Blog.

The title of the Article is "A cyber afterlife plan." Basically, the article discussed an online service that protects your passwords to your various online accounts and permits those beneficiaries listed with the service to access these passcodes after your passing.

I don't think I need to comment on this article other than saying that this raises a great point and concern. What I did want to comment on was the larger issue this raises. There are lots of information we retain that may get lost upon our passing. Very often in meetings with surviving family members I will hear "I know my dad had a ____ but I cannot find where he put it or remember what he said about it." This blank can be many things, a safe deposit box, assets in other states, personal property items of value, where you have a pre-paid cemetery lot, banking passwords and the like. Privacy concerns causes us to be more guarded and secretive, this in turn raises the likelihood that if we are not around, this information will be hard, possibly impossible, to recover.

At our office we try to advise our clients on some of these issues but the responsibility of passing this information along falls on the individual to keep good records, keep them in a safe place, but most importantly, remember to tell your designated family member or friend where this information is safeguarded.