Now imagine if you lose access to all your data! God forbid, you meet with an accident or a medical emergency and you are the only one in your family that has the access. First, your family will need your medical records. Secondly, they will need your health insurance data. Thirdly, they may need access to your bank account for funds. If you are incapacitated for a long time, somebody would need to take care of your business dealings too – contracts, transaction details or legal deeds. If things were hunky-dory when you were around, can you protect your family in such emergencies?

We buy insurance for a reason – the unforeseeable calamity that could strike out of the blue. By the same logic, don’t we all need insurance for our digital assets too? After all, if everything is online today, and what we keep online is the key to our physical assets in the real world, what is the backup in case you are unable to get the crucial ‘key’ that could make life easier for your loved ones?

Let’s take this a step further. God forbid, if you get permanently disabled, or even deceased, the last thing you would want is your family to struggle or suffer. The common practice is to keep all important information neatly filed and preserved, but we generally do not prepare our families for emergencies. This is similar to the fire-drill that companies practice so that employees are prepared for any eventuality. Unfortunately, most of us do not follow the same at home. Call it inertia, procrastination or whatever else.

Digital inheritance is a unique feature that riddlock has and all data storage apps should provide too. If you have chosen an inheritor for your account, say your daughter, she will automatically get access to your account if it stays inactive for a period of time as set by you. If and when the inheritance cut-off happens, she will be able to get the data and documents you have in your account. Voila! No struggle for information and no suffering due to lack of it.

All you need to do is store all important stuff with total privacy and security, keep historical updates, important documents, deeds, bills and receipts, and make someone in your family its inheritor for emergencies. Think of it like an online filing cabinet with an automated inheritance trigger. Protect your family by adopting this minimum discipline in your online life, not for trivia but private information that your family is entitled to.

You may have already guessed the benefits of such a feature. It is like leaving behind a ‘legal will’ or a ‘power of attorney’ for one’s digital assets. One has to be careful in choosing the right inheritor, hence a close and trusted family member is the best choice. Ideally, all members of the family should have someone as a backup inheritor for life’s emergencies.

You may be interested in finding out just how many accounts, deposits, funds, insurances or properties remain unclaimed because families are ignorant of the assets they could have a right to. Even when they know, many do not possess the necessary documentation to claim it. Find out in your city or country and be surprised!