Psst: CHANGE YOUR PASSWORD!
A recent statistic was released by Google in honor of October being Cybersecurity Awareness Month that 57% of people share their passwords with a significant other, but only 11% of people change their passwords after breaking up or divorcing. This is ALARMING for family law attorneys. As you can imagine, opposing parties who have access to a client’s email accounts, social media accounts, bank accounts, and the like, can create significant problems for both the attorney and the client in family law cases.
Although both state and federal law have created statutes and codes to outlaw unauthorized access of our accounts and electronics, it does not always mean that people will abide by those laws. The scarier part is that some of these laws do not even protect us from this information being used as evidence in court, nor does it mean that access is always “unauthorized,” even if it was obtained by illegal means.
In the age of the “cloud” we are presented with even more challenges of clients having shared iCloud and other cloud-sharing accounts, sometimes without even realizing it. This has lead to clients being tracked without their knowledge, and to clients’ information being accessed without them ever knowing. It can be difficult for the phone companies to even untangle all of these crossed accounts and passwords in a manner that provides assurance to our clients that they are now free from the eye of the opposing party.
Our best advice starts with immediately changing passwords to ALL accounts upon a break-up or separation- this should happen long before your actual divorce and should really happen within the 24 hours of the break-up or separation. For joint bank accounts and accounts held jointly with the opposing party, this will not be an immediate option, so keep that in mind when using such accounts, as the other party will have access to the same. Best practice is to take it a step further by creating all new accounts for things like email, iCloud, DropBox, Google Drive, and the like. This ensures that no one can access an account that you previously gave them access to. For instance, if I open Chrome at home on my Apple computer and update my gmail password then come to work and open Chrome on my other apple computer there and go to login to my gmail, the new password is already saved for me because my Apple devices are all sharing information with one another. This means if you have shared the information on your spouse’s computer or cell phone, they too will now have access to your new password. The answer here is going even a step further and creating a whole new cloud-sharing account and making sure that your old account has been removed from your devices.
These technology ins and outs can be confusing and convoluted, so when you need assistance, take your device to Apple, Microsoft, or the cell phone carrier to have them assist.
During a break-up or separation, there is a lot going on; there are a million things to process and consider. We understand that technology is not always at the top of that list, especially for those who do not fully understand how it all works in the first place. With that said, we encourage you to secure yourself and your accounts and take steps to protect your privacy as quickly as possible, whether or not you think or hope there will be a reconciliation. You can always re-share account passwords in the future, but once information has gotten to the opposing party, you cannot get it back, and this can have serious ramifications in all aspects of your family law case. Protect yourself, and change your passwords!