Like every other day people got hitched with their TV sets to watch business news on a reputed News channel. A show where experts give advice to people. They started receiving calls and a call made headlines! A person enquired if he could sell 20,000 shares of his stock which were bought by his grandfather in 1990, who was paralyzed for the last 10 years.
People were surprised to find out the net worth of those shares (1.3 Billion).
This was only possible because they found a physical certificate that was preserved. Nowadays everything is digital and we receive credentials directly to our email. How would you recover those shares if you were in their shoes in this digital generation without any physical certificate?
Who is a digital native?
I am an active millennial user of Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Tumblr, etc and my investments are in the form of cryptocurrency, stocks, virtual gold, and mutual funds. These investments are digital and do you think my family is aware of them along with their credentials? Not really!
I consider myself a Digital Native and digital life is an integral part of me. Nowadays everything is digital from purchasing basic needs to any other documentation. The money we earn rotates online and so as our investments.
How important is it to secure your personal and financial data online on the off chance anything happens to you similar to the story above?
What are digital assets?
Everyone organizes their physical assets,insures them and also plans how to pass them to their future generations and family. What about your funds in your PayPal account or your frequent flyer miles that can be shared with your family? Your Etsy account, bitcoins, stocks,etc are your digital assets and can be included in the succession planning. Isn’t it important to transfer them responsibly?
Imagine if you have few people who owe you money and no one knows about it? Or you bought some hefty shares?
According to a survey “More than one in ten people have made provisions to leave Internet passwords available to someone after their death”.
With online services(http://bit.ly/yowill), it takes few minutes to secure and organize all your information in one place. All you have to do is add your information that you want to share along with a nominee. Your nominee would only get access to your information upon any unhappening!
There are always different layers of information that you might want to share, some with your siblings and not your parents, some with your friends and not your family. That’s the reason it is important not to record passwords in your legal will which is a public document.
On an average each individual has 21 online accounts and each platform has a different process to delete your account once they learn about your death. The last thing you want is your family to drown with strict legal proceedings in-order to get access to your accounts.
From a case study, a family had to take a legal action to get access to a family members yahoo account but they were denied due to their terms and conditions that we usually agree upon while creating accounts. Doesn’t this lead to a loss of very important information?
Start securing your information now.