NBC News just reported that a Russian crime ring stole over a billion passcodes. Our lives just got one notch more complicated.

Most adults average 28 online accounts. My last count was 87. That is A LOT of usernames, passcodes, PINs and information to remember. I manage several accounts for my Mom, some for my children (school, dance, soccer and track registrations), most of our household accounts and then all of the accounts for MemoryBanc.

We fail to recognize how many accounts we keep track of in our heads, on our mobile phones and even under our keyboards, I quickly realized how much information surrounds a household when I stepped in to help my parents. I started by documenting medical information (prescriptions, doses, doctors, history, follow-ups) so I could be a good health care advocate. Then I needed to pay bills and manage their finances, then came household services and ultimately online accounts. The binder I created to keep track of all of their information launched MemoryBanc. I quickly moved our own household to the print, then the digital edition of the MemoryBanc Register. Given I have more than 87 online accounts — I have made sure to document them all.

The NBC News story provides users with many options on how to create unique but varying passcodes as well as suggestions for online password storage sites. Most passcode managers have encrypted data and 2-factor authentication to prevent hacking — but nothing is 100% secure (just look at the issues the US has had with data breaches) and those protections also leave your loved ones without access should they need to act on your behalf. Make sure to have a solution that allows you to print out a copy of your passcodes. Should the company that owns your password manager have a critical failure … you should have a plan B.

If you don’t have have a list, I hope you will take this opportunity to document your accounts, I have included a simple excel spreadsheet that contains all the information you should be documenting. You can download it and document your usernames, passcodes, PINs and security codes (don’t save it on your computer please).

If you are worried about sharing this information, consider how helpful it would be to a loved one should you ever be unable to act on your own behalf. Pleaded.

 

 

My gift to you is this free worksheet that will collect and organize your usernames and passcodes.