passwords | organised castle

During the past 5 days I have completed numerous mundane tasks including grocery shopping, washing and ironing. However, my attention has been predominantly on one task that I was determined to complete.

I will not go into specific details except to say that I reviewed all of our logins and passwords and the way that they are stored. There are various programs available for securely storing sensitive information. I know that nothing is perfect but since we live in a digital age it is important to do the best we can.

Old or obsolete accounts have been closed/deleted. I have created unique passwords for everything we access online. I felt that this was of utmost importance when you consider the number of organisations who have suffered data breaches in the past couple of years. There are undoubtedly other breaches which go unreported. By having unique passwords for everything means that if we are impacted by any future security breach then the impact will mostly be limited.

Even after deleting about 25 assorted organisations I still have well in excess of 100 different logins and passwords.

I am not going to be complacent but I do feel a little more reassured regarding the integrity and security of our information in the digital space.

Please do not post anything about your own ‘system’ but do let this be a reminder for us all to be a little more vigilant.

I have trouble keeping track of all of the user names and passwords for all of my online activities. These range from things as diverse as my superannuation, Facebook, event ticketing and rewards programs.

It is annoying when I can’t figure out my password for something but I was thinking the other day, what if I was to no longer want or be able to access these various sites due to death or disability? Will they be de-activated after a period of non-use or will they always be accessible once someone has the password? What if The Duke and both died? Should we have a way of passing this information on to our children with our instructions for managing such a scenario?

I know this sounds quite morbid but I think they are questions I need to address. While I am not going to put the details of what I plan to do into the public arena of the internet, I will say that I have come up with some ideas of how I am going to handle this.

I do not want anyone giving away specific information but I am interested to know if anyone has given this topic any thought or implemented any processes for their situation.