I have just added an interesting article to this blog by the Wall Street Journal that I think is well worth reading.
It is clear from this article that having a Will is not all you need to have in place if you want to have all your affairs in order if you were to become seriously ill or pass away.
Who would have thought that there is about USD$39 Billion in unclaimed assets in unclaimed bank accounts and other assets in the USA alone. A significant portion of this will be because in an estate situation no one was aware of the bank accounts or assets.
The article talks about the need for information on proof of purchase, bank accounts, health information, insurance and investment details.
Here is the link to the article - Wall Street Journal - Designing your Death Dossier
Sunday, February 12, 2012
Tuesday, January 31, 2012
Welcome to 2012
Our holiday is over and time to regularly update this blog again. We have added a new section called Interesting Articles. We will post things we come across in the Personal Information Management space that are relevant and interesting. Take a look at today's links and let us know what you think. Also let us know if you have any other articles you think we should post here.
Friday, September 9, 2011
What is your Personal Information Worth?
So how do Google and Facebook make their money? From your personal information!
All of those search terms you enter, that information you place on your Facebook wall, those paces you decide to click to are all available to Google and Facebook and the like to store and analyse so they can understand who you are, what you are interested in. As a result, they are able to sell advertising to people who want to sell you something or influence your views in some way. Yes, essentially Google and Facebook make their money off your personal information.
So how can you start to realise some of that value for yourself? You need to start thinking of your information as an Asset. Earlier this year the World Economic Forum published a report entitled "Personal Data: The Emergence of a new Asset Class". The paper acknowledges input from a diverse group of people ranging from employees of a range of major corporations (including Google), educational institutes, and other parties interested in this area.
The paper introduces many concepts and thoughts about the area of Personal Information, including how better use of personal data offers untapped opportunities for socioeconomic growth and how we need to create a balanced ecosystem around personal data to ensure that the interests of all parties are taken account of.
There are also some interested in scenarios and principles presented that are well worth reading to help you understand how different the world could be in the future if we all better managed our personal information within the frameworks presented in this paper.
I cannot do justice to this paper in this post so if you are at all interested in this area, take the time to click here to go to a page where you can download the full paper which is an easy 40 page read. If you want to learn how you can start treating your personal information more as an asset and start to derive some value from it, then I recommend this paper as one of the most useful I have come across. Have a read and I look forward to hearing your thoughts via this Blog.
Monday, August 29, 2011
What are some simple ways to protect your Identity?
In some ways it is obvious, Identity theft is more likely to occur if you make it easy for someone to take and use your identity information.
Here are a few things you can do to help prevent that happening.
1. If you are asked for your Identity information, ask why they are asking for it and what they will do with it.
2. Keep documents that are used to establish your identity (e.g. Birth Certificates or Passports) in a very safe place. Ideally in a physical safe if you have one.
3. Do not write down PIN Numbers or passwords. If you cannot remember them all then make use of software like myINFOSAFE to store then and keep them safe but accessible.
4. Identity crime does not always result from information that is stolen, but from information that you publish on the internet. It is best not to publish information like your birth date on the internet. Often organisations will user date of birth as one of the verification questions when identifying you and if people can find this out they can easily impersonate you).
5. Be suspicious of any unexpected events (Letters from Creditors, bank transactions you cannot remember making) that could be a result of identity crime.
6. If you have sensitive information on your mobile phone, keep it password protected. It can be inconvenient we know but there is often a significant amount of information on phones that help people steal your identity.
7. Remove all personal information from personal computers before you dispose of them.
8. Make sure you properly dispose (shred or burn) of bank statements, electricity bills, and any piece of correspondence with your name or address on it. These documents should never be put in public recycling bins. Consider getting your statements provided online - it is good for you and the environment as well.
9. Passwords are often sent to you via email when you sign up for new services. Go to your email and search all folders, including your deleted items, for the word “Password”. Check all the emails that are returned and make sure you transfer all the information into myINFOSAFE, or a similar digital safe, to ensure no one with access to your PC could find your passwords.
10. If you believe you are the victim of identity crime, contact the police.
We will be publishing a free guide to preventing Identity theft on our website soon. If you have any other ideas or thoughts that we should include then please let us know.
Here are a few things you can do to help prevent that happening.
1. If you are asked for your Identity information, ask why they are asking for it and what they will do with it.
2. Keep documents that are used to establish your identity (e.g. Birth Certificates or Passports) in a very safe place. Ideally in a physical safe if you have one.
3. Do not write down PIN Numbers or passwords. If you cannot remember them all then make use of software like myINFOSAFE to store then and keep them safe but accessible.
4. Identity crime does not always result from information that is stolen, but from information that you publish on the internet. It is best not to publish information like your birth date on the internet. Often organisations will user date of birth as one of the verification questions when identifying you and if people can find this out they can easily impersonate you).
5. Be suspicious of any unexpected events (Letters from Creditors, bank transactions you cannot remember making) that could be a result of identity crime.
6. If you have sensitive information on your mobile phone, keep it password protected. It can be inconvenient we know but there is often a significant amount of information on phones that help people steal your identity.
7. Remove all personal information from personal computers before you dispose of them.
8. Make sure you properly dispose (shred or burn) of bank statements, electricity bills, and any piece of correspondence with your name or address on it. These documents should never be put in public recycling bins. Consider getting your statements provided online - it is good for you and the environment as well.
9. Passwords are often sent to you via email when you sign up for new services. Go to your email and search all folders, including your deleted items, for the word “Password”. Check all the emails that are returned and make sure you transfer all the information into myINFOSAFE, or a similar digital safe, to ensure no one with access to your PC could find your passwords.
10. If you believe you are the victim of identity crime, contact the police.
We will be publishing a free guide to preventing Identity theft on our website soon. If you have any other ideas or thoughts that we should include then please let us know.
Thursday, August 18, 2011
Would your loved ones have the information they need if something was to happen to you?
One of the main reasons customers tell us they value myINFOSAFE, is that they know that if something was to happen to them, then their loved ones would be able to access all the information they need, in one secure place. This could be just when you are away from home on business or visiting friends, or could be in the event of a major illness or accident, or in the worst case, when someone passes away.
Just think about the scenario; would they know what insurance cover there is in place, would they know where your Will and other important documents are; do they know the details of your past health. and that of other family members; could they log onto banking websites so they can know what money is available and what bills need to be paid regularly; would they know what investments there and when they mature etc.
We have been researching Wills and estate management situations recently, and not only can it be a stressful and emotional time in dealing with the grief over the loss of a loved one, but it is often an expensive and time consuming process as well. It is clear to us that the process of administering an estate is completed much easier, and significantly less expensively, if relevant up to date information is available.
We encourage our customers to make sure someone you trust knows how to access myINFOSAFE in times of need. This can either be letting someone know where to find the password if needed, or by providing them a copy of myINFOSAFE with your information on a USB stick so that they can access in an emergency. You could even print out the relevant pages from myINFOSAFE and provide it to someone to keep in a safe place for when it is needed.
So take this as a reminder for you to go and check if you have all your personal information up to-date and that some one knows how to access it. It is surprising how key information can change overtime. You will also gain benefit from being able to access the information yourself when you need it.
Just think about the scenario; would they know what insurance cover there is in place, would they know where your Will and other important documents are; do they know the details of your past health. and that of other family members; could they log onto banking websites so they can know what money is available and what bills need to be paid regularly; would they know what investments there and when they mature etc.
We have been researching Wills and estate management situations recently, and not only can it be a stressful and emotional time in dealing with the grief over the loss of a loved one, but it is often an expensive and time consuming process as well. It is clear to us that the process of administering an estate is completed much easier, and significantly less expensively, if relevant up to date information is available.
We encourage our customers to make sure someone you trust knows how to access myINFOSAFE in times of need. This can either be letting someone know where to find the password if needed, or by providing them a copy of myINFOSAFE with your information on a USB stick so that they can access in an emergency. You could even print out the relevant pages from myINFOSAFE and provide it to someone to keep in a safe place for when it is needed.
So take this as a reminder for you to go and check if you have all your personal information up to-date and that some one knows how to access it. It is surprising how key information can change overtime. You will also gain benefit from being able to access the information yourself when you need it.
Tuesday, August 9, 2011
Is your Personal Information Worth Anything?
A recent World Economic Forum (WEF) report titled Personal Data: The Emergence of a New Asset Class proposes that your personal information is very valuable. In fact it quotes Meglea Kuneva, the European Consumer Commissioner as saying “Personal data is the new oil of the internet and the new currency of the digital world”.
Clearly Google and Facebook understand this as they make their money of the personal information you enter into their services. They analyse and mine this information and gain the vast majority of their revenue from helping advertisers match their messages to people interested in their products and services. In turn these revenues are driving the high valuations of these companies and making their shareholders rich from your information.
People are starting to realise not only the value that is being derived from their information, but the issues with privacy related to their information being on the internet. One of the reactions we have seen as a result, is a significant number of people deciding to stop using social media sites like Facebook (In the USA alone 6 Million Facebook users cancelled their accounts in May this year).
So if our information is an asset how do we get value from it? There is no silver bullet here and this will take a lot of thinking from individuals, governments and private companies to find the right mix of controls and incentives to find a new balance.
The WEF report proposes a vision of the future as follows:
• Individuals can have greater control over their personal data, digital identity and online privacy, and they would be better compensated for providing others with access to their personal data.
• Disparate silos of personal data held in corporations and government agencies will be more easily exchanged to increase utility and trust among people, private firms and the public sector.
• Governments need to maintain stability, security and individual rights will meet in a more flexible, holistic and adaptive manner.
What is clear to me is that there needs to be change from how things work today and there will be solutions that emerge in the market that will contribute to the new models going forward. Clearly the Personal Data Ecosystem Consortium (PDEC), of which I am part of, will be one pare of the solution.
For those interested in this area click here to visit the PDEC Website. The WEF report can be downloaded from the "About" page on this website.
Clearly Google and Facebook understand this as they make their money of the personal information you enter into their services. They analyse and mine this information and gain the vast majority of their revenue from helping advertisers match their messages to people interested in their products and services. In turn these revenues are driving the high valuations of these companies and making their shareholders rich from your information.
People are starting to realise not only the value that is being derived from their information, but the issues with privacy related to their information being on the internet. One of the reactions we have seen as a result, is a significant number of people deciding to stop using social media sites like Facebook (In the USA alone 6 Million Facebook users cancelled their accounts in May this year).
So if our information is an asset how do we get value from it? There is no silver bullet here and this will take a lot of thinking from individuals, governments and private companies to find the right mix of controls and incentives to find a new balance.
The WEF report proposes a vision of the future as follows:
• Individuals can have greater control over their personal data, digital identity and online privacy, and they would be better compensated for providing others with access to their personal data.
• Disparate silos of personal data held in corporations and government agencies will be more easily exchanged to increase utility and trust among people, private firms and the public sector.
• Governments need to maintain stability, security and individual rights will meet in a more flexible, holistic and adaptive manner.
What is clear to me is that there needs to be change from how things work today and there will be solutions that emerge in the market that will contribute to the new models going forward. Clearly the Personal Data Ecosystem Consortium (PDEC), of which I am part of, will be one pare of the solution.
For those interested in this area click here to visit the PDEC Website. The WEF report can be downloaded from the "About" page on this website.
Friday, July 29, 2011
Are you keeping up with Smart Phones?
Smart Phones are everywhere and they're not just being used to make phone calls. Over 60 per cent of the use of Smart Phones is now for social networking, email, browsing the net, conducting business activity, listening to music, taking pictures and playing games.
This change of use often means there is significant personal information either stored, emitted (e.g. location and usage) or accessible from your Smart Phone. These added functions offer real benefits to users but also risks, not only to the individual, but to businesses. But firstly, what is driving this market growth in Smart Phones?
Apple gave the market a real move-on kick over the last few years with their stylish iPhone range. This has been so succesful that it has helped Apple become the world's second most valuable company behind Exxon. Such market dominance attracts competition though, and we have seen phones using Google's Android operating system recently overtake Apple in terms of devices being shipped. Meanwhile, traditional phone vendors such as Nokia have fallen well behind.
The growth in this market also comes at the expense of the PC market. IDC is telling us that in the fourth quarter of 2010 there were more Smart Phones sold globally than PCs as more people make their phone their primary IT device.
This trend is not abating and we have seen the traditional PC market players realising the importance of the Smart Phone market and start investing to be part of it. For example, HP has recently launched their Veer Smart Phones and Microsoft is attempting to shore up market share by purchasing Skype and has teamed up with Nokia who is now shipping their new phones with the Windows operating system at their core.
Traditional mobile telecommunication carriers are also being impacted. They see the value in their brand diminished by the brand of the device manufacturer and application provider and risk being relegated to providers of core infrastructure bandwidth alone.
This growth in Smart Phones is attracting significant investment. On a recent trip to Silicon Valley, I saw this first hand when I learnt that one leading venture capital firm alone, Kleiner Perkins, has a US$400 million fund for iPhone apps as well as a US$400 million fund for Android. That level of investment will drive better applications for the user and will further accelerate growth in sales of Smart Phones.
One result of this massive growth is the "consumerisation" of IT. What this means is that new information technology emerges first in consumer markets and then spreads into businesses and not the other way around as we have seen in the past. We find that often our home based IT equipment and services are both more capable and less expensive than what is provided in the workplace.
At the recent Net Hui, I facilitated a session around "The changing face of the internet - Mobile and Security". Over a hundred people were in the session and the core of the discussion centred around two things, the desire of people to increasingly bring their own technology into the work place and the need for increased security on mobile devices.
Consumerisation is fuelling tension between the traditional business model of providing staff a corporate phone and controlling the use of the device and the information on it via corporate policies and you wanting to Bring Your Own Device or Technology (BYOD or BYOT) to the workplace.
We discussed this at length at the NetHui session and it was clear that many users were being forced to carry at least two cell phones, which is not ideal. Some organisations (mainly smaller ones) had already moved to allow staff to have their own devices. However, all agreed that there needs to be a clear policy within organisations to explaining to staff what the rules are regarding their Smart Phone use in either scenario.
This is not simple though, and there are many real issues that need to be considered. What happens when a device is lost? If it is, is the business able to direct that all information, including personal data, is wiped from the phone?
What happens to company information on the phone when the user leaves the company? What behaviour can the business expect from the staff member on the device to ensure the reputation of the business is not impacted?
Who shares the cost for the device? Should the company be able to restrict access to certain sites the user wants to use on the device? Who is responsible for keeping the phones operating system up to date with security patches?
I cannot provide answers to all of these questions here. Each organisation needs to do this for itself based on its own position. It is clear that many businesses are having to update their mobile phone and security policies and there is an opportunity for collaboration here to help each other and avoid us all having to reinvent the wheel.
The NetHui provided an online forum for discussion on this topic that will be left open until the next Hui. I encourage all of you who are interested or concerned about this area to make use of the forum to post your thoughts, questions, and provide answers if you can. You can even post copies of policies that are working for your organisation or those that are not.
What is the long term solution then? Maybe we can look to the wider market where we are seeing function move from the end user devices up into the cloud, enabling use of the utility scale that offers lower price, improved security and simplified management. Will we see the same happen with Smart Phones? Will that mean we will see Smart Phones become less smart over time and become just a mobile access point to services in the cloud? This way, personal and business applications could be accessed from different cloud based services, making them easier to turn off and on as the needs of the user, and who they work for, changes.
This change of use often means there is significant personal information either stored, emitted (e.g. location and usage) or accessible from your Smart Phone. These added functions offer real benefits to users but also risks, not only to the individual, but to businesses. But firstly, what is driving this market growth in Smart Phones?
Apple gave the market a real move-on kick over the last few years with their stylish iPhone range. This has been so succesful that it has helped Apple become the world's second most valuable company behind Exxon. Such market dominance attracts competition though, and we have seen phones using Google's Android operating system recently overtake Apple in terms of devices being shipped. Meanwhile, traditional phone vendors such as Nokia have fallen well behind.
The growth in this market also comes at the expense of the PC market. IDC is telling us that in the fourth quarter of 2010 there were more Smart Phones sold globally than PCs as more people make their phone their primary IT device.
This trend is not abating and we have seen the traditional PC market players realising the importance of the Smart Phone market and start investing to be part of it. For example, HP has recently launched their Veer Smart Phones and Microsoft is attempting to shore up market share by purchasing Skype and has teamed up with Nokia who is now shipping their new phones with the Windows operating system at their core.
Traditional mobile telecommunication carriers are also being impacted. They see the value in their brand diminished by the brand of the device manufacturer and application provider and risk being relegated to providers of core infrastructure bandwidth alone.
This growth in Smart Phones is attracting significant investment. On a recent trip to Silicon Valley, I saw this first hand when I learnt that one leading venture capital firm alone, Kleiner Perkins, has a US$400 million fund for iPhone apps as well as a US$400 million fund for Android. That level of investment will drive better applications for the user and will further accelerate growth in sales of Smart Phones.
One result of this massive growth is the "consumerisation" of IT. What this means is that new information technology emerges first in consumer markets and then spreads into businesses and not the other way around as we have seen in the past. We find that often our home based IT equipment and services are both more capable and less expensive than what is provided in the workplace.
At the recent Net Hui, I facilitated a session around "The changing face of the internet - Mobile and Security". Over a hundred people were in the session and the core of the discussion centred around two things, the desire of people to increasingly bring their own technology into the work place and the need for increased security on mobile devices.
Consumerisation is fuelling tension between the traditional business model of providing staff a corporate phone and controlling the use of the device and the information on it via corporate policies and you wanting to Bring Your Own Device or Technology (BYOD or BYOT) to the workplace.
We discussed this at length at the NetHui session and it was clear that many users were being forced to carry at least two cell phones, which is not ideal. Some organisations (mainly smaller ones) had already moved to allow staff to have their own devices. However, all agreed that there needs to be a clear policy within organisations to explaining to staff what the rules are regarding their Smart Phone use in either scenario.
This is not simple though, and there are many real issues that need to be considered. What happens when a device is lost? If it is, is the business able to direct that all information, including personal data, is wiped from the phone?
What happens to company information on the phone when the user leaves the company? What behaviour can the business expect from the staff member on the device to ensure the reputation of the business is not impacted?
Who shares the cost for the device? Should the company be able to restrict access to certain sites the user wants to use on the device? Who is responsible for keeping the phones operating system up to date with security patches?
I cannot provide answers to all of these questions here. Each organisation needs to do this for itself based on its own position. It is clear that many businesses are having to update their mobile phone and security policies and there is an opportunity for collaboration here to help each other and avoid us all having to reinvent the wheel.
The NetHui provided an online forum for discussion on this topic that will be left open until the next Hui. I encourage all of you who are interested or concerned about this area to make use of the forum to post your thoughts, questions, and provide answers if you can. You can even post copies of policies that are working for your organisation or those that are not.
What is the long term solution then? Maybe we can look to the wider market where we are seeing function move from the end user devices up into the cloud, enabling use of the utility scale that offers lower price, improved security and simplified management. Will we see the same happen with Smart Phones? Will that mean we will see Smart Phones become less smart over time and become just a mobile access point to services in the cloud? This way, personal and business applications could be accessed from different cloud based services, making them easier to turn off and on as the needs of the user, and who they work for, changes.
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