March Monthly Bulletin
President’s Message
I’m devoting this entire monthly bulletin to a very important topic that affects us all – digitally preparing for when we’re gone. Seldom a month goes by that I, or someone else on the FLS team, helps a member access a deceased loved one’s phone or computer to obtain access to financial accounts and other information. This happened to me again yesterday and prompted me to write this.
Death is inevitable – don’t make it even more difficult for those you leave behind. Here is some basic advice on how to ensure your loved ones can manage passwords, sensitive data, and social media profiles after you die. As we live more of our lives online, it’s increasingly important to enable our spouses or designated family members to access digital information when we’re gone. Follow these steps to make sure this process is less difficult for them.
The first, and by far the most important of these, is a password manager. This contains the keys to all your digital accounts, like banking and credit card information and any other important information. We often remind members how important it is to have a password manager, so please don’t keep putting this off. This is absolutely the single most critical thing you can do to make it easier on your loved one after you’re gone.
While ensuring your partner, or other family members, have access to your financial information is important, don’t forget about social media. Preserving profiles may seem trivial, but our lives are increasingly lived online in places like Facebook, so these accounts are the modern version of physical photo albums, letters, and other keepsakes.
Facebook lets you select a legacy contact who will memorialize your account and keep a pared-down version of your profile active after your death. A memorialized account will show a banner on your profile indicating that you’re deceased, remove your account from public search results, and turn off birthday reminders. Friends will still be able to post messages on your timeline, if you choose to allow it. To set up your legacy contact in Facebook and learn more about this service, click here for more information.
You can also opt to have your Facebook account deactivated after you die. Under Memorialization Settings, scroll down and click Request that your account be deleted after you pass away, and opt in in the pop-up window.
For your Gmail account, Google offers anInactive Account Manager that automatically turns over control of your account to a designated person after a set period of inactivity. To set this up, go to this page, logon, and click Start. Then, decide how long you want to wait before Google declares your account inactive (by default, this is set to three months.) Below that, add or verify your phone number and another contact or recovery email. Google will attempt to contact you multiple times via this number or email before it turns your account over to someone else. When you’re done, click Next and follow the remainder of instructions for other optional actions you want Google to take.
If you have Two-Factor Authentication (2FA) set up on important accounts (and you should have), your loved ones will need access to your phone in addition to your username and passwords to intercept secondary codes. One option is to add a trusted person’s fingerprint or face to your phone. If you have an iPhone with TouchID, you can add an extra fingerprint by going toSettings > Touch ID & Passcode > Add a fingerprint. If you have an iPhone X or above, simply add another Face ID in the same Settings area of your iPhone.
Options for Android phones vary, depending on which device you have, but a quick Google search for your specific device should put you on the right track to make your phone accessible for obtaining the 2FA code.
After you’ve taken the preceding steps, a good portion of your data should be readily accessible to those you leave behind. However, not every service offers an easy way of granting access. Remember to include the login information for any backup service you use. Otherwise, it’s a good idea to get in the habit of saving your work to an external hard drive or flash drive that your loved ones can easily access.
If you have a Windows PC or a Mac, there are many methods you can use to save a backup of your most important files. You can use File History in Windows, or Time Machine on a Mac, to make regular backups that can be easily retrieved by your loved ones.
Everyone needs to have at least a simple will, but do you have one? Do you know you can easily create one online? Services like LegalZoom, and others, let you put everything to writing before it’s too late. Depending on the complexity of your wealth and estate, a simple online will might not be sufficient. It’s best to seek advice from an attorney or credible advisor.
One final option to consider is recording a video. By doing this, you can document all the things your loved one or family member needs to do, even adding viewable instructions. And you can include how-to instructions for the not-so-important things. The possibilities of this are endless and you can easily do it yourself by turning on Screen Share in Zoom or Google Meet and then recording your session.
Most importantly, do something! Don’t wait until it’s too late and your partner or family member is faced with not only losing you but dealing with the burden of trying to access financial and other important information without the proper keys to unlock it. Doing “these” things and having “that” talk are difficult, but they’ll make it easier for someone you love.
Larry McJunkin, President