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Apple is introducing a mechanism to allow access to certain data after passing: https://www.cultofmac.com/744814/apple-digital-legacy/ https://www.cultofmac.com
by memco 5y ago
Apple is introducing a mechanism to allow access to certain data after passing: https://www.cultofmac.com/744814/apple-digital-legacy/ https://www.cultofmac.com/744814/apple-digital-legacy/. It would be great to see more tools and services provide ways to pass on digital information so we don’t have too many haunted digital graveyards not too much digital treasure lying in waste.
- dheera 5y agoAs much as I hope nothing happens to me, I've always thought about writing a "dead man switch" piece of code that sends all my keys and passwords to a couple of trusted people if multiple signals all suggest that the unfortunate has happened. For example, all of the following must be true: * Zero Github commits in a week * Zero Facebook or Instagram posts in a week * Zero e-mail outbox messages in a week * Zero smart devices switched on/off in a week * Zero outgoing phone calls in a week etc
- sneak 5y agoYou can just give private keys to a bunch of people, and give a cyphertext encrypted to all of them to your attorney, to be distributed upon your death. Then you don't need complex technical triggers.
- dheera 5y agoI suppose. But that means I must find an attorney first. What do they cost, like $900 an hour? ... I think that's part of what I'm trying to replace by technical means.
- sneak 5y agoIf you have enough cryptocurrency to worry about distributing upon your death, you have enough money to hire an attorney. (PS: they aren't $900/hour.)
- dheera 5y agoOkay, I suppose I don't have that much crypto to worry about. I was thinking more along the lines of releasing controls to my websites I control, private repos, notebooks full of ideas, AWS keys, etc.
- sneak 5y agoThis may sound harsh, but after you're dead, it's unlikely that anyone else will care about any of those things.
- Alex3917 5y ago> I think that's part of what I'm trying to replace by technical means. Just use something like Dashlane. People can report you dead, and then you have up until your specified waiting period to mark yourself as not actually dead. If Dashlane goes out of business you'd need a new provider, but as long as you don't die within a month or so of your password manager then you're set. Much better than writing your own.
- sneak 5y agoThis means Dashlane themselves (or anyone who hacks them) can read all of your data, too. Also, you're almost certainly going to outlive Dashlane.
- hsbauauvhabzb 5y agoA week is a short amount of time if you ever take full blown technology holidays. Additionally, zero XXX could be easily broken by some arbitrary function (a Facebook app for instance). I’d be careful to multi factor data decryption, the encrypted data must be released and some party you trust who isn’t likely to die with you holds a decryption code
- ipaddr 5y agoYou are one power outage away from that email.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- xkjkls 5y agoWhat if you go on vacation for a week and your email server goes down?
- bradleyjg 5y agoUse Shamir’s secret sharing algorithm. If 5 out of 7 trusted people want to decrypt you data there’s probably a good reason.
- gurchik 5y agoI've thought about dead man's switches as well, but with two differences: One, I think a week is too short, as another person has already said. I'm planning a week vacation soon and want to be unplugged the entire time. Also, while rare, I can imagine a natural disaster could last longer than a week and the last thing I want to worry about is making sure I send a few emails. Second, I'm curious why you want so many conditions to be true before the trigger? I've seen services (and I've thought of setting up a simple self-hosted option) that simply email you a link on a predefined cadence and all you have to do is click the link. In order to protect against some weird spam filtering, I'm thinking a text message or Discord message could also be sent. The odds of both breaking for a month I think is rare. Why might I also want Github commits and phone calls to be checked?
- dheera 5y agoI might forget to click a link periodically, especially if I get busy, or take a vacation. But it's highly unlikely that I will be absent from an entire set of services like the above. If I would forget to click a link, it's either because I'm super busy with work, in which there will be multiple Github commits per day, OR it's because I'm enjoying a vacation, in which my social media might be more active. I have been away from technology but not for more than 2 weeks at a time. I suppose just s/week/month/ or whatever.
- booleandilemma 5y agoI've thought about this but I just don't trust myself enough to not mess it up and send an alarming and embarrassing email to my loved ones. I'm reminded of the accidental HBO email that got sent out a couple weeks ago.
- elondaits 5y agoLastPass has a “dead man switch” where my wife (authorized by me) can request access to my account and if I don’t respond for a month she gets it.
- rawtxapp 5y agoGoogle also has a "dead man's switch": https://www.google.com/settings/account/inactive https://www.google.com/settings/account/inactive for the interested.
- adanto6840 5y agoProbably due to Google Suite -- perhaps they have something similar available at the administrator level -- but that link shows me: "The setting you are looking for is not available for your account."
- bewuethr 5y agoGitHub does that, too: you can designate a "successor". https://docs.github.com/en/github/setting-up-and-managing-your-github-user-account/managing-access-to-your-personal-repositories/maintaining-ownership-continuity-of-your-user-accounts-repositories https://docs.github.com/en/github/setting-up-and-managing-yo...
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- cirrus3 5y agoI really like the idea of that upcoming service. But, not exactly where you want to store a piece of information worth $2B. A good old fashioned safety deposit box in a Swiss bank or something and several layers of trustees would be more applicable in this case.