Legacy Locker

Google launched  new features with their Google Health service today (you can read the details here).  Obviously there is much inefficiency in the field of online medical documentation and healthcare issues (privacy rights, etc), but it inevitable that the Internet will be a major intermediary for the future of healthcare. Your vital information will need to be very well protected and respected, but at the same time allow healthcare institutions and loved ones to easily and securely access this critical data.

Google Health’s new features are a great complement to an existing comprehensive estate plan and your Legacy Locker account.  The first step in any estate plan is to discuss your end of life documentation and make sure your primary care givers are aware of your wishes.  However, once engaged in the process of thinking about this difficult subject matter it’s important to look at all the issues your legacy may create.  That is why we feel that Google health is just one important aspect to consider when safeguarding your online self.

For those of you who do try out Google’s Health services, you should know that this account can be incorporated into your Legacy Locker thereby creating a beneficiary for this account in the event of disability.  Currently, Google Health does not provide the ability to share this information post mortem. While there are some sharing features and services built into the new Google Health feature, our analysis is that it might not be enough for the variety of types of needs of our customers. After all, the whole point of an estate plan is to protect all of your different assets with all sorts of different types of directives and needs.

Overall we’re very excited to see companies as big as Google beginning to take a look at the concept of digital services that extend deeply into personal lives. So to our customers, who have a lot of content secured in your Legacy Locker, take a look at Google Health. There’s a lot you can do with it, just don’t forget to make it part of your Locker while you’re at it!

We are constantly seeking to improve our service and add value for our users, and today we have two new features to announce: secure file storage and Video Legacy Letters.  We think these are important enhancements to the service, and they are being offered at no additional charge to our existing or new customers!

1. File Storage - you can now keep a secure, encrypted copy of your most critical documents in your Locker.  Examples of useful documents to store include your will, a property deed, stock certificates, and other “can’t lose” files. Each account holder (of a premium or lifetime account) can store as many as 10 files, of up to 5MB each (we plan to increase the number of files in the future).
2. Video Letters – in addition to written Legacy Letters, you can now upload video messages as well.  Each user (with a premium or lifetime account) can upload as many as 3 videos, and each file can be up to 20MB in size.  Videos will be stored securely and individually encrypted, ensuring that only the intended recipient will be able to retrieve them, when the time comes.  In the future we intend to allow direct recording from within the site, and will enable more than 3 videos per user.

Having a secure, digital copy of important documents (like your will for instance) can be extremely valuable.  And Legacy Locker can be accessed and updated from anywhere in the world, so if you want to retrieve your document or update with a new copy, it’s easy to do from any computer, any time.

Legacy Letters offer a means for communicating with loved ones (like a spouse, a child, or a dear friend) one last time.  Video is an even more personal medium than text-based letters, and allows your loved ones to see you one more time, hear your voice, and remember you the way you want them to.  Each video is safely and securely stored, and can only be retrieved by the intended recipient.

Both of the new features are only available for paid account holders.

We think that these features add value to our service, and we’re excited to introduce the new functionality.  We just launched two months ago, and we have many more ideas for new feature sets and tools.  If you have ideas feel free to pass them on to us, we would love to hear from you.  You can comment here on the blog, or send us an email at support [at] legacylocker [dot] com.  We promise we read every email that comes in, and we get some of our best ideas from our customers.  We thank you sincerely for your business.

-The Legacy Locker Team

For the last week, you may have seen a “security warning” pop up when visiting the site or trying to log in to your Locker.  First, we apologize for any inconvenience this caused, but wanted to explain why you were seeing it, and why it was no cause for concern.

When we launched the site, all content was on our secure server.  As our traffic began to increase, so did the server load, causing some pages to slow down.  This included simple content, like the home page, the features pages, etc.  We decided to split the Locker part of the site from the basic content, and so we changed the login to go to https://secure.legacylocker.com/login.

Unfortunately, we hadn’t accounted for the fact that the SSL security we were using would only apply to one “domain”, and we were now using two (www.legacylocker.com and secure.legacylocker.com).  Normally this wouldn’t be an issue, but we hadn’t taken into account the fact that many people had already bookmarked the original links.  As people tried visiting the old links, they were being shown security warnings, even though the site was just as secure as ever.

It took almost a week for us to realize how many people this was affecting, and we immediately added a second SSL license to make sure the original links still worked as well.  So now anyone with an old bookmark will automatically redirect to the proper location, and everything should be working normally.

We want to reiterate: at no point, ever, was any part of our server unsecured.

Again, our apologies for the confusion or any inconvenience this caused anybody!

Hope everyone is having a good monday.  We are, as the CNN article about us went live today and thankfully it’s a great piece (video too)!  In coincidental timing we have a planned server upgrade happening tonight at midnight PST.  At that time we’ll be moving the “application” part of Legacy Locker separate from the “content” part of the site.  The only possible impacts to you are (1) the site will be down for up to an hour, and (2) if you have bookmarked https://www.legacylocker.com/dashboard your new dashboard will be https://secure.legacylocker.com/dashboard.

Please note: you may see some error messages in the interim, but this does not affect your data in any way!! We apologize for any inconvenience this might cause you during the transition!