Digital Lockout: A Cautionary Tale

I recently flew to Spain to meet a friend who was coming from London. We enjoyed a few lovely days together until disaster struck. After spending an hour at the pool, my friend went to check his phone for the time—only to realize he'd forgotten to take his phone out of his swimming shorts pocket. By then, it was too late: the phone had slipped out and been sitting at the bottom of the pool the entire time.

Attempts to revive the device failed, so we drove to the nearest phone store to purchase a replacement. That's when the problems compounded. Although his SIM card worked in the new phone, he couldn't validate the verification emails from his cloud backup services—there was no way to prove his identity without access to his accounts.

The result? He was stuck in Spain with no access to his cash(all digital), return flight boarding documents, or phone contacts. As a self-employed contractor in the middle of signing up for a new contract, the potential loss of income and reputation couldn't have been worse.

I'd never really considered this digital lockout scenario before, but watching my friend's increasing agitation and frustration as he unsuccessfully tried to access his much-needed details brought it powerfully home. Thankfully, after a further day of frustration, a friend of mine had the phone number of one of his friends. After a whole lot of upheaval and further phone calls, a key holder gained access to his home laptop and could confirm the validation emails. In total: three days of worry and disruption…and three days of all drinks and food on me.

So what could my friend have done to avoid this nightmare?  Particularly when we're traveling and perhaps already out of our comfort zone. The solution, to my mind, isn't abandoning security measures, but building in redundancy before disaster strikes.

Keep a note in your wallet with critical phone numbers and flight details, old-fashioned perhaps, but paper doesn't need validation emails. Carry a physical card for payments, screenshot your boarding passes and important documents, then email them to yourself for browser access. And consider giving a trusted contact back home access to essential information they could retrieve in an emergency.

The irony is that modern security protects us brilliantly from hackers but can lock us out just as effectively when things go wrong. I guess the question isn't whether your password is strong enough—it's whether you can prove you're you when everything that proves it is under water.

 

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