Passwords
Lets talk about passwords. I am going to talk about filing systems and email accounts as part of your Estate Plan and an integral part of both of those is a great password, so I will deal with passwords separately here.
This part of Estate Planning is actually important for you during your life as well as an important preparation for your death. You should establish a system for keeping your important documents, and your logins and passwords for online matters. This system needs to be safe from identity theft, but able to be found by you or your loved ones. These days everything has a log-in and a password, not just your online accounts, and if someone knows or can guess your passwords then they can cause you a lot of trouble. This could be a stalker, a bully, or an online predator who just wants to steal your identity.
Passwords may need to be changed to prevent a person who knows you well from accessing you accounts.
It is on my to do list
We all know that passwords are important, right? We should have a good one, we should probably update them, and who else has my password for an emergency situation? Actually come to think of it, this is all too hard. I will put it on my ‘to do’ list with all the other #lifeadmin that is languishing there.
I want to help you get started with your passwords, by giving you some bite sized steps that you can take, today.
First tip - use this more
My first tip is perhaps an obvious one, or at least not very creative, but I am going to say it anyway - use this option more often. If you set a really great password for your Google account then you can set (and remember) that password once, and then just use this option as much as possible.
I could tell you to set really great and different passwords for everything, but let’s face it you are busy, you have limited energy and time, and you aren’t going to do that. Instead, set one really great password for a Google account, perhaps a specific Google account that you just use for this purpose, and then use that to sign up every time you get this option.
Setting the password
One common method of identity theft is they start with something that requires a log-in, password and some of your personal information, something really low key like a grocery shopping account or a similar store card like Kmart or Big W. So they hack a bunch of accounts on a popular system like that, which people don’t take seriously and use weak passwords for.
Once they hack that (because you didn’t think the password was important) and have a list to focus on, they then have a little more information about you and use that to create a better profile of you, and hack better sources of information. Hackers today are hacking people, you, the individual. Finding out enough information about you (through social media or publicly available lists from the company that promised not to sell your information), to then figure out other information.
What is a safe password?
You can increase the security of the word by making changes or making up new words. For example, you can start with the word donut which is not considered to be a strong password. When you break the word down you end up with Dough Nut.
If you want to take it a step further then dough is used to make bread and Nuts fit on bolts so you end up with Breadbolts which is a much more secure password due to its length, and that it is not very easy for a computer or person to guess. You could set the reminder question to be ‘what is your favourite food’ which will make you think oh, donuts! No one else is going to get to bread bolts from that, so it is safe to have a reminder or even to write that on a post it note stuck to your desk.
One common problem that people have is that if their password for one site is hacked, that password tends to give access to many different accounts or sites. You can use the second and third letters from the website in question, put in a certain place in the password to make your password more secure. You need to make sure that you tell your people who need access to your information what this word is, but for instance if you are using the password Breadbolts to log into an ANZ bank site, your password would become BreadboltsNZ.
Then your password reminder could be ‘count 23 donuts’ to remind yourself that the password is Bread (Dough) bolts (nuts) and the second and third number, without an identity thief being able to pick that up.
Now, your Executor won’t remember all these rules, but this is the way to create a safer password for identity theft purposes. As with all things in life you have to weigh up a few considerations. One option is to create a really safe password for your #lifeadmin contacts list, share that really safe password with your Executor and spouse and then save the actual user names, accounts and passwords there. If you do this then DO NOT use this password anywhere else, at all, ever. Just for this list.
This does mean that if anyone hacks your contacts list you are absolutely going to be fleeced for all your worth, but it also means it is easier for your Executor and spouse if anything happens to you. If you are going to do this then ensure the password is strong and that any device that you use to access your contacts (such as your phone or your lap top) is also password-protected so that all is not lost if you lose your phone or laptop.
Another trick is to use a random word that has nothing to do with your life, the difficulty here is that you need to remember it (without writing it down on a post it note!) the advantage is that a hacker won’t guess it. It has to be completely random though, like you could use the word solicitor but only if no one in your life is a lawyer. Then you could just add things to it to meet the password requirements, like Sol1citor# Don’t put ‘what is a lawyer’ as the password question either the hackers are going through your password questions. Like I said this only works if the word is completely random and means nothing in your life (trombone, football or orthodox so long as no one in your family plays trombone or football or is a member of an orthodox religion).
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