What is Planned Departure?
Planned departure is an online service which lets you help your loved ones after your death. It allows you to store important information about your life and online identity and decide who should receive that information. Planned Departure can help your loved ones by ensuring that critical information is supplied to them in the easiest possible way - in the unfortunate event of your death.
You can even give your last message to all the people you love and setup a page for your obituary where people can pay their respect after your death.
We built Planned Departure to ensure that critical information about your life and online identity is not lost or abused after death. This is one small thing you can do to give a little comfort to people you love after the difficult time of your death.
Why should I plan my departure?
There are many reasons to use Planned Departure. Life as we know is uncertain and our death could be around the corner in natural calamity, epidemic, accident or terrorist attack - who knows? All of us, irrespective of where we live, are equally vulnerable. On the same lines, there are always few people who will be affected very deeply by our sudden death.
Key information about your life like - What all services you use online? How do you pay mortgage? Who are the important people in your contact? Which domains you own? Every piece of information is valuable and can be very useful for people you leave behind. IN some cases, this information could be more valuable than the monitory support insurance companies can provide.
Not only that, if you are not around to monitor your accounts and online identity - there is a possibility that those accounts will get abused. This can potentially damage your reputation - even after you are gone for good.
Lastly, last words which you would tell to your loved ones can mean a lot to them. So there are practical as well as emotional reasons to use Planned Departure.
Why did you start Planned Departure?
We started Planned Departure because unfortunately we (Anand Ramdeo and Komal Joshi - Founder) have seen few unexpected deaths in our families. We have experienced - first hand effect of such loss and know how much a service like this would have been useful.
Fortunately, we were running our software company - Atlantis Software Pvt Ltd in UK for a while now and when time was right - we started development for this project as well.
Is it similar to my will?
It is similar to the will in the sense that you are defining who will get key information about your life after you pass away. Planned Departure can not work with the physical assets though and for that you should rely on the normal will. With Planned Departure - you can decide who will use your flicr account, but can not specify that personal album in the top shelf should be given to your brother in Mumbai.
How different it is from writing down everything in a diary?
Surely you can write everything in the diary - but what if that diary is lost or worst stolen? Also what if you want to give different type of information to different people - will you create different diaries? And what if you need to give that information to more than one people - will you keep multiple copies of that diary?
Planned Departure is lot better than diary. It is safe and secure - no one is allowed to access your data - apart from you. After your death, we send this information to only people who are designated as recipient for that information. You can access Planned Departure any time of day from anywhere with a computer and Internet connection.
Why would I create my own obituary?
We are all connected to people around the world. You might have relatives & friends scattered in various parts of the world and your obituary will be a single place for all of them to pay their respect to you. It also gives you opportunity to give one last message to every one.
Is Planned Departure available in my country?
Planned Departure is an on-line service and is available to the whole world.
How will this service make people I love comfortable?
Planned Departure will make life of people you love a bit comfortable by giving them critical information about your life when they need it most. Think about the unpaid loans, arrangements for EMI and various direct debits you have for different services you use? If that information is not accessible to your family members in the easiest possible way - it can be extremely difficult for them to handle everything.
Not only that, what if your online identity is stolen and someone start abusing your account. This could be very damaging for your reputation and for the reputation of your family members.
With Planned Departure, you can ensure that critical information about your life and online accounts is transferred to the relevant people and make their life a bit comfortable and also ensure that they are not abused.
What do I need to do to get started with this service?
Getting started with Planned Departure is extremely easy - it is as simple as counting 1, 2, and 3. Have a look at the various plans [Link to pricing page] we have and select the one which is suitable for you. You just need to have a valid email address to get started with this service.
Everything else about your account, verifiers, beneficiaries and digital assets can be added to your account after your account is created.
Who are verifiers and why do I need to add them?
Verifiers are the people who you trust the most. We will get in touch with these people if our system flags that you are not responding or if some one contact us and reports that you have passed away.
We will contact these people and may ask for your well being or proof of death or medical condition. Only after getting confirmation from these verifiers we will release information you have stored with us.
Who all can get my information after I die?
It is entirely up to you. You will decide who will be recipient of every piece of information we have in the system. We call these recipient as beneficiaries in the Planned Departure world. We know that every piece of information might be relevant to only one and one person. You can specify an image assigned to your brother and a different image assigned to your friend or wife. You can even distribute same information to multiple people.
So short and sweet answer is - you decide who all will get this information and how your beneficiaries will receive this information.
How can I give some information to multiple beneficiaries?
When you create digital asset in Planned Departure - for every asset you have you can specify who all will get that information in the unfortunate event of your death. This might be an extremely important feature - for example Let us say you have scanned a precious picture from an old school album and want to distribute it to a group of people as your last gift. All you need to do is define who all will receive this picture after your death and we will take care of the rest.
What do you mean by digital assets?
Information is asset and information stored in the digital format becomes digital asset in the Planned Departure world. This information could be anything - It could be an instruction to your business partner or information on your home loan or a picture of your first date. What ever you store with us becomes digital asset which could be given to your beneficiaries after your death.
Can I change information in my account after it is created?
Anytime. You can access and make changes to your account any time you want and as many time as you want. In fact we recommend that you always check that we have updated and current information about the verifiers and beneficiaries.
We know it is extremely easy to forget to check and so if we notice you have not updated your detail, we will gently remind you that you do need to update this detail.
How do you know if I have passed away?
We can find about this in more than one way. Depending on your preferences, we will find out about this if you have not responded to our email or have not done any activity in your accounts or networks recently.
Another way to find out that you have passed away is if your beneficiary, verifier or well wisher use our Report a passing [Link] functionality and tell us that you have passed away.
In both the cases - we will check with verifiers and find out what has happened. We will not start releasing this information till we are absolutely certain about your death.
What happens after I die?
Well, first thing - we feel sad - than we start to act. After confirming with verifiers we change your status in our system. This process is and will always be manual. Changing your status triggers a bunch of activities -
* Your obituary page will become live with your last picture and message.
* Your beneficiaries will receive all the assets you defined for them - in either email or postal delivery.
* After getting confirmation that all the assets are received by various beneficiaries - we wait for three more months before deleting your data forever from our system - apart from obituaries.
What happens to my data after it is given to my beneficiaries?
After getting confirmation that all the assets are received by designated beneficiaries - we keep your data for three more months before deleting it for good.
Please note - your obituary and all the messages in your obituary will still remain available on the system.
Some one has made me verifier on your website, what does that mean?
It means that some one has given you big and important responsibility to fulfil. Being verifier in our system means that our user has placed huge trust on you and asked us to do the same. If something happens to our user, we will contact you first before doing anything else.
After getting correct information from you along with some evidence, we will start the process of releasing information user has stored with our system.
Some one has made me beneficiary on your website, what does that mean?
It means that some one you know care for you and love you. When you become beneficiary of any user in our system, it means that user might have stored some information for you which will be delivered to you after user passes away. This information could be anything - it might be an instruction on how to manage house / business or a personal message.
Our system will automatically check well being of our user, but you can also use our Report A Passing feature and let us know if user has passed away to speed up the process.
Is there a free plan and what do I get in free plan?
Yes, there is a free plan and you get all the important functionalities of the system for free. In the free plan you can add two verifiers, one beneficiary and 5 digital assets.
Free plan does not allow you to add more than one beneficiary and specify postal delivery as an option for the beneficiaries. Apart from this, it also does not let you setup obituary.
What is the difference in yearly and lifetime time membership plan?
In terms of functionality, there is no difference at all. In yearly membership you agree to pay every year whereas in lifetime membership you pay once and remove the hassle of paying every year.
Lifetime membership will not be affected by any increase in the membership fees for future, whereas yearly membership will be affected by changes in the pricing in future.
Are there any other types of plan?
No, we have only three types of plans - Free, Yearly and Lifetime membership.
I am on a free account, can I upgrade to yearly membership?
Yes, you can upgrade your membership any time. Just login with your detail and from your account follow the upgrade workflow.
I am on a free account, can I upgrade to lifetime membership?
Yes, you can upgrade your membership any time. Just login with your detail and from your account follow the upgrade workflow.
I am on an yearly account, can I upgrade to lifetime membership?
Yes, you can upgrade your membership any time. Just login with your detail and from your account follow the upgrade workflow.
I am on an yearly membership; can I downgrade it to free account?
No, it is not possible for you to downgrade the account. Reason why it is not possible is because we would not know which beneficiaries and assets we should remove.
You can however delete your account and come back to us and join our free membership.
Why should I go for lifetime membership?
Lifetime membership isolates you from the future changes in the price. Also, we do hope you live more than 10 years and yearly membership will become expensive at that point. It also means that there is one less thing to worry about - which is paying us every year.
Can I cancel my account and membership?
Yes, you can cancel your account and membership any time you want. When you cancel your account, we delete all the data we have for you in our system.
How do you ensure security of my data?
We are using infrastructure from Google to store your data which is extremely safe. Datastores in Google are backed up regularly and have extreme major of physical as well as network security.
How secure is the payment I made to Planned Departure?
We are using PayPal to handle payment which is one of the most advanced payment gateway in the world. PayPal is used by more than XXX million user worldwide to carry out YYY million's transaction on the daily basis.
What do you mean by memorable words and how it is used?
We are using enhanced security and using memorable words along with the user name and password to ensure that hackers have no way to breach and access your account.
How do you know you are giving information to the right person?
Before sending out any information to your beneficiaries, we check with verifiers you added in the system first. After getting confirmation and evidence, we send out information to your beneficiaries.
We also ensure that information about beneficiaries is up-to-date in our system by reminding you periodically about the same.
How do you ensure security of my data?
We are using infrastructure from Google to store your data which is extremely safe. Data centres in Google are backed up regularly and have extreme major of physical as well as network security.
Okay, tell me something more about Google's security.
Well, this place is not big enough to tell you about Google's security, but feel free to read information on Google's infrastructure security. You might also want to read more about Google's security from this white paper explaining Google App Security.
Okay, I am happy about security of data, but how secure is the payment I made to Planned Departure?
We are using PayPal to handle payment which is one of the most advanced payment gateway in the world. PayPal is used by more than 85 million users worldwide to carry out transaction worth more than 60 million GBP per day. You can get more information about security of transactions in PayPal at their security centre.
What do you mean by memorable words and how it is used?
We are using enhanced security and using memorable words along with the user name and password to ensure that hackers have no way to breach and access your account. Hackers might use brute force technique to try various combinations of user name and password, but combining one more variable makes it extremely difficult to break.
How do you know you are giving information to the right person?
Before sending out any information to your beneficiaries, we check with verifiers you added in the system first. After getting confirmation and evidence, we send out information to your beneficiaries. We also ensure that information about beneficiaries is up-to-date in our system by reminding you periodically about the same. Information we send to beneficiaries is also password protected and can only be accessed with the keys we give to your designated beneficiaries.
What do you do with our personal data?
We do not access any personal information you store with us. The only information we access is your contact information. We use your contact information for following purposes.
1. To identify your well being. We send periodic emails to you to check if you are okay. If you want, you can stop this by changing your preference in the user profile.
2. We may contact you to give you information on product update or any other new service from planned departure.
Do you sell our personal data or give access to any third party?
No. Never. We respect your privacy and we will never ever share or sell your data to any third party for marketing purposes.
I understand that you are storing data on the Google infrastructure, so who owns my data you or Google?
Neither. We or Google does not own your data. Your data is owned by you and only you. It is not shared with or sold to anyone. You can delete this data if you do decide to terminate your membership with us.
What do you do with data I provide for verifiers or beneficiaries?
We contact verifiers because they are our first point of contact if we can not contact you or someone reports that you have passed away. With beneficiaries, we only contact them if you asked us to do so. We do contact your beneficiaries after you pass away to distribute your digital assets.
Like your information, we never ever share or sell information about beneficiaries and verifiers with any third party.
I have not received any confirmation email?
Sometime it is possible that our email may end up in the spam folder. Please check if our email has gone into Spam folder. If not, please contact us and we will sort out this for you.
I am experiencing a problem with the payment, can you help?
Sure. Please contact us and let us know the problem you are facing and we will help you sort the problem.
What I am looking for is not answered in the FAQ, can you help?
Certainly. Please contact us and we will be happy to assist you in any way we can.
