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To counselors and other people concerned:

I want to bring to your attention something easy to neglect. It is the severity of violent destruction of a victim’s electronic/communication devices.

* Singpass .. I was unable to log in to Singpass after my old phone was destroyed. Somehow my Singpass password is incorrect. I was locked out of Singpass on a weekend.

* banking .. Every banking APP requires special set-up when you migrate to a new phone (Phone_2). Some banks (HSBC as example) absolutely require the old phone (Phone_1). You must log in on Phone_1 to deregister before you can use Phone_2 to register. If you have Phone_1 destroyed (by violence), then you must visit the branch. I’m lucky that I am able to visit a branch. (Some users are immobile or overseas.)

PSBC (Postal Savings Bank of China) requires branch visit to set up any phone (I have no hardware token).

PNB (Philippines National Bank) requires a lengthy authentication before a replacement device can be onboarded. During the authentication, I found some personal details outdated and forgotten, so I was unable to proceed.

* immigration/medical records .. like thousands of citizens, I use my laptop and phones to keep essential pictures, approval letters, previous application/petition data, appointments, prescriptions, diagnostic reports, and other historical records. Best practice is cloud backup. I do back up some but there are too many of these digital assets that I sometimes rely on local backup.

Is it realistic and reasonable to ask each individual to back up every immigration document to cloud, 100%, all the time? There could be a name that you never thought essential and don’t save to cloud.

* essential software with expensive license.. For example, BeyondCompare is an essential windows application I bought years ago and installed on my old laptop (destroyed). I need BeyondCompare on the new laptop, but I misplaced the license (my bad). I rely on BeyondCompare to detect thousands of changes in hundreds of important data.

Beside this software, there are other software products we installed over the years and are now unable to set up. Luckily, I had very few of these.

* chat history .. wechat/WhatsApp incoming/outgoing messages can count to thousands a week. Millions of messages over a few years. Among these past messages, there are gems of valuable data. Most people, like 9 out of 10, find themselves relying on chat history. Admittedly, individuals should avoid over-reliance since we can lose our phones. However, there is a difference between phone loss “due-to-own-action” vs “destroyed-by-violence”. (Think accident-injury vs injury-by-attack)

A similar thing is email history. (I am lucky with web-email .. reliable cloud backup.)

* chat APP log-in .. If you visit or work in China, you would know that for many individuals wechat is as essential as Singpass + WhatsApp + email combined. After my old phone was destroyed (by violence), I had difficulty logging in to wechat on my new phone, because Wechat system changed log-in protocol, and also because for a few years I have remained logged-in continuously and forgot how to log in. Partly my fault, but it happens to most wechat users. As far as I know, WeChat the vendor doesn’t provide hotline support.

Note “dumb phone” is not a personal communication device in this context. Neither are television, video/audio systems… because they don’t contain _essential_data_unavailable_elsewhere_. Losing a television due to violence would be traumatic and costly, but it would be “fixed” within days. For me, I would hate losing my laptop (destroyed) more than losing a television. The latter doesn’t disrupt the essentials in my life such as paying bills, finding contact details, transaction surveillance, fund transfers…

“Essentials in my life” refer to essential services and routines in our digital lives. These personal electronic/communication devices are becoming essential to individuals’ lives, including their social lives, their financial lives, and their work.

A curse of modernity? No. Singapore and other governments are investing in, advocating, and promoting digital ecosystems. There is a side effect — The widespread and deep dependency on personal digital devices tends to increase the severity and pain of loss when it occurs.