In an hour, know who can open your mail, your files and your accounts
Mail, files, passwords, the domain, the backups: somebody set each of them up, and somebody can open each of them. Most offices and families could not say who.
In one hour we write it down together, on one page: each account, whose name it is in, who holds its key (the password, the administrator login or the recovery code), and who could get in if that person were away. You keep the page, and within two working days you have three findings from me in writing. It is free, and you do not need to become my client to use any of it.
How it goes
Before
You send me two lines
What you run today, and who looks after it. Nothing else: no passwords, no access, no documents.
The hour
We fill in the page together
On a call, at a time we agree. One row for each thing you rely on: mail, files, passwords, the domain, the backups. For each one: whose name the account is in, who holds the password or the administrator access, and who could get in if that person were away. Where neither of us knows, the row stays empty. An empty row is a finding.
Two working days later
Three findings, in writing
The three rows I would look at first, what each one means for you in plain words, and the first thing to do about it. You can act on them yourself, or hand them to whoever runs your systems.
What you keep
— Your page, filled in
One page, yours: to keep, and to show to whoever needs to see it. What one looks like, for an invented family (PDF).
— Three findings
The three rows to look at first, in plain words, each with the first thing to do.
— The questions to ask
For each finding, the question to put to whoever runs your systems today. Ten of them are on one page you can use now (PDF).
What it is, and what it is not
— Free, and one a week
It costs you an hour. I hold one a week, so requests are taken in the order they arrive.
— No password changes hands
We write down who holds each password, never the password itself. I ask for none, and for no access.
— It stays between us
What you tell me goes no further, and nobody learns that we spoke.
— Not a sales call
I say what I sell only if you ask. If the page shows that everything is in order, that is the finding.
— Who it is for
An office, a firm or a family that relies on mail, files and passwords somebody else set up, and wants to know where it stands. For a family it is also where a digital inventory starts: the list of accounts that advisers recommend keeping, so that what you leave behind online (your digital legacy) is not left to chance.