Get your Digital Life Together, Please

The latest story that demonstrates the issues around our digital assets describes how the father of a best-selling novelist, Marsha Mehran, has been on an International data hunt to claim her writing stored online. 

Apparently there is a “surge of families struggling with similar questions is driving a behind-the-scenes political battle between tech companies and estate lawyers over who gets the keys to someone’s digital afterlife.” Facebook and Google have set up options for a legacy contact, but the reality is that someone might need access to your information even when you are still on this planet.

My parents gave me a durable power of attorney so that I could step in to help if they needed it, but it didn’t give me access to any of my father’s business or personal online accounts. Thankfully, we could take care of this before he could no longer help me (my father had Alzheimer’s).

As a mom and wife, my husband and I need to share access to our bill-pay, utility, mobile phone and even our insurance portal since the information pertains to our shared lives.

Please take a minute to download the free guide that will help you tame the Internet.

The guide is a chapter from the best-selling MemoryBanc: Your Workbook for Organizing Life. 

Do you know how to protect your personal and financial information? Find out here.

Listen to the radio broadcast with Frank of Aging Boomers who interviewed Kay H. Bransford, best-selling author of MemoryBanc: Your Workbook for Organizing Lifeto find out how you can protect your personal information and safely share it with loved ones.

They discuss the key issues that surprise many families and that has lead to more than $58 billion sitting with state and federal treasurers in an “unclaimed money” pool to include:

  • The rise of divide and conquer households
  • The increase in aging adults and their need for long-term care services
  • The number of online accounts, usernames, passcodes, and PINs that are managed by the average American.

Fight “Digital Amnesia” with free chapter from MemoryBanc

This morning, TODAY covered the story of “Digital Amnesia” — the experience of forgetting information that you trust a digital device to store and remember for you. We keep phone numbers, emails and even some passcodes on our digital devices which puts our information at risk and means our brains are out of the habit of memorizing this important information.

According to the study The Rise and Impact of Digital Amnesia by Kaspersky Lab, almost all (91.2%) of those surveyed agreed that they use the Internet as an online extension of their brain. Almost half (44.0%) also admit that their smartphone serves as their memory–everything they need to recall and want to have easy access to is all on it.

How do you fare against these simple questions:

– Can you dial the phone numbers of your family members from memory?
– How often have you reset a passcode in the past week because you couldn’t recall it?

For a simple back-up solution to your digital life, you can download a free chapter of the best-selling book MemoryBanc: Your Workbook for Organizing Life.

To take control of all of your personal information and accounts, purchase a copy of MemoryBanc: Your Workbook for Organizing Life from Amazon at a 30% discount.