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My brother passed away very suddenly a few years ago, and I was put in charge of wrapping up and archiving his "digital" life. We were very lucky that we had ac

by OskarS 3y ago

My brother passed away very suddenly a few years ago, and I was put in charge of wrapping up and archiving his "digital" life. We were very lucky that we had access to a recovery email for his main gmail account (as well as a couple of passwords that his partner knew) and was able to access and archive virtually all data we could think of (services like Google Takeout were invaluable). I realized that if this had happened to me, it would have been virtually impossible to do, as all my passwords and credentials are in my password manager, and the password to that was only in my head. It's a good thing to plan for this eventuality, to make it easy for your family and friends to wind up your "digital life" after you've passed. 1Password has a very good solution for this, with a "recovery document" you can print out and write down your password on, which contains instructions anyone else would need to access your 1Password account. I gave a copy of this document printed out to a small number of people I trust implicitly. You never know when something sudden can happen to you. For the sake of those you leave behind, it's a nice gift to plan for this eventuality, even if it seems far off at the moment.

bombcar 3y ago
This is one of the reasons that I’ve begun to pare down the number of online financial accounts I have, even though churning for bonuses is fun. Every single one will have to be dealt with eventually by someone, so if I can reduce the number of banks I deal with it’s worth it, even at some small cost of not being “perfectly optimal”.
- OJFord 3y ago
  Banks are the last thing I'd worry about (I wouldn't) - they're highly regulated, audited, and have been dealing with this forever, since before 'passwords'.
  - bombcar 3y ago
    I have no worry about the funds being lost. It’s just imagining my heirs having to contact and close fifty+ accounts.
    - kemotep 3y ago
      Additionally, if you don’t list a beneficiary on any of these accounts, they have to go through probate court to gain access. The fewer hurdles and headaches that your loved ones have to go through the better. Having dealt with this early this past year with a family member, having the list of “chores” to do upon passing helps and reduces the headaches. Especially if those funds are necessary to pay for the sudden bills that a funeral and so on can bring up.
    - rokizero 3y ago
      Serious question: How common is having dozens of accounts? I live in NL and have 3 at the same bank. Why would anyone have 50+ accounts?
      - saikia81 3y ago
        The only reasons I can imagine are fund transfer times, and some isolation security for big amounts. As a fellow dutchie, I just use one bank for personal, and one for my business.
      - throw0101b 3y ago
        Someone may have chequing+saving at one bank, a stock brokerage (or retirement savings) account at another institution, and a may have credit card(s) from completely different one(s). So that could potentially be (at least) three different financially-related accounts.
      - macinjosh 3y ago
        That dude is probably quite wealthy.
        jonhohle 3y ago
        It’s not necessarily related to wealth (except that you need some savings), but when ING Direct was a thing my wife and I had an account for every savings goal and used it as our “envelope” system. There was no cost per account and you could open one in seconds, so we had a bunch of low value (dozens of dollars! Dozens!) accounts for saving for our next phone or vacation. That could have been done with a spreadsheet, but it was less work to just make separate accounts.
- dumpster_fire 3y ago
  Yeah I used to have a massive spreadsheet tracking the entirety of household finances. I was worried that no one would know where the money was if I suddenly died, so I started a monthly finance 1:1 with my spouse. Even wrote an "upon death or incapacitation" playbook for her. The second session was just her saying WTF I can't keep track of the location, ownership and tax benefits of 40 accounts! I've since closed 3/4 of all accounts because of that.
  - bombcar 3y ago
    The killer for me was working out how much time I was spending playing Excel Warrior and how much it was “making” me and realizing that I was working in my free time for Pennie’s.
    - darkwater 3y ago
      Good and honest realization. It seems easy once you do it but it can be really hard to actually get to that point.
    - em-bee 3y ago
      that is what keeps me from getting into all this detailed finance management or worse trading, likewise any other side business that could earn some money but just isn't the kind of work i want to do. making a budget is useful, as is tracking your expenses, but that's about it for me.
xmdx 3y ago
Had the same experience with my dad passing recently, we had access to everything because we know the passwords he uses and he was ok with sharing those with us. Will definitely look into the 1password emergency kit, thanks for mentioning it. 2fa is the other big challenge after that.
pmckenna 3y ago
Weirdly this is something I’ve been thinking about a lot recently. I had no idea 1Password provided a recovery kit until you mentioned it. Just had a look and looks good. I’ll definitely go through the steps, but I’m wondering what the best way to store it is. Feels weird keeping a document lying around giving access to all your passwords, bank cards, finances etc. I’ll have a think about storage.
- lm28469 3y ago
  > I had no idea 1Password provided a recovery kit until you mentioned it. There are people out there with 1password and no recovery kit ? Some people like to live dangerously
- mathgorges 3y ago
  Banks’ safe deposit boxes are a good choice if there are any near you, though they’re often expensive. If you have a lawyer/attorney that you trust they’re often in the habit of securely storing physical documents, but again, expensive. Personally, I (a cheap-ass) keep a copy in a wooden box buried underground in a secure location along with a few other things. However, the security of physical things remains a difficult problem that is most easily solved with money!
nicechianti 3y ago
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not_the_fda 3y ago
I've recently been planning for my death, no urgent need, but you never know. I've put a backup of my keepass passwords on a USB as well as a printout of the passwords and the master password in a firebox. I also keep a list of assets and financial accounts in there along with birth certificates and passports. My spouse and I both have a key. I would have used a safe deposit box but those are disappearing.
- justanideaortwo 3y ago
  Please remember that USB storage needs to be recharged every so often, or the data will be lost.
hoherd 3y ago
I had a similar situation where I lost my brother very unexpectedly. I ended up having to run a password cracker on his windows account because nobody had a recovery email. Thankfully his windows credentials were not very strong and his gaming GPU was able to crack the password in a few days using a Linux livecd, and I was able to expand from there into his 1Password account. Like you, I realized that having a trusted second party with the keys to my digital kingdom would be a wise choice in case of a disaster.
hoseja 3y ago
I'm with the other guy. Your unique pattern of electronic activity has ceased irrecoverably. No need for your patterns of electronic activity in computers to be any different.
petee 3y ago
Another consideration, when my dad passed we had his passwords but not his phone or tablet pins/patterns. Both devices are encrypted, and the samsung I believe is set to wipe after a number of failed attempts. While there probably isn't anything on them, it's always been a pain to not know.
- ThrowAway1922A 3y ago
  > While there probably isn't anything on them, it's always been a pain to not know. I know I wouldn't care because I'd be dead, but I really do not want my family getting on to my personal devices after I'm dead. Those are things that I will never give them the passwords for, not everything is their business.
  - cdelsolar 3y ago
    yeah same here. Do I have to give out my passwords, or can I just make a doc with important things?
    - petee 3y ago
      Doesn't matter as much what you do or how, but more importantly that you've communicated it to the people who will have to deal with your stuff if you were to kick the bucket tomorrow. My parents simply made a list of passwords on a piece of paper, buried with the other important papers.
    - em-bee 3y ago
      it depends on where the important stuff is. i have all the family photos on encrypted devices, and the most efficient way to share them is to share the passwords for those devices. my phone they don't need because the important stuff from the phone is backed up anyways, so they just need that backup. so i guess the easiest way is to keep separate backups of stuff you want to keep private and stuff you want to share.
    - shever73 3y ago
      I have a doc, which is password-protected and shared with my wife. It contains details of bank accounts, how to access shares, who we're insured with and passwords / passcodes for things she might need access to.
kqr 3y ago
I'm lucky enough to never have been put in this situation, so please excuse my ignorance: why does someone need to be able to sign in to my accounts when I'm no longer?
- maxfurman 3y ago
  Anything with recurring billing needs to be cancelled, for a start.
  - praseodym 3y ago
    Call the deceased person's bank to cancel all credit cards in their name and that's taken care of.
    - evanriley 3y ago
      Doesn't work for all services. Some services will, if unable to charge the card,send whatever amount to collections, and now they have to deal with that.
      - bee_rider 3y ago
        Debt collectors are persistent, but hey at least if they follow me to Hell maybe they can take a tour, check out apartments for their stay.
        devnullbrain 3y ago
        Or pester your widow(er)
    - zo1 3y ago
      You'd think it's that easy. Some places literally are unable to do anything unless you're some sort of "signatory" or the actual account holder. No amount of if, buts, maybes, and certified/stamped copies of death certificates will convince them. I couldn't even cancel the health insurance company's recurring payments after a death. And they had the audacity to send a "how was your hospital stay" questionnaire to the account holder's email after they were "discharged" by the hospital.
josephd79 3y ago
Now that I think about it, I should probably do the same. I use Bitwarden and they allow you to add an 'emergency contact' that is granted access after X amount of days.
itsthecourier 3y ago
LastPass let you put two emails as your family members and you setup a 30 day limit to show you are alive. If your loved ones require access to your passwords and you are not there for 30 days, Lastpass release your passwords to them
- woleium 3y ago
  But we don't use LastPass after they have demonstrated over and over that they are not to be trusted with our secrets, right?
  - tome 3y ago
    And it means they must be keeping the recovery passwords in plaintext, so it just gets worse...
    - digging 3y ago
      not necessarily, it may send them an email inviting them to create an account with control of your account.
    - 0cf8612b2e1e 3y ago
      The email does not have to be the password. Something like, “password is taped to the back of my diploma”
swader999 3y ago
The finger doesn't need to be alive to unlock the phone. But yeah, don't put your loved ones through that.
DicIfTEx 3y ago
Useful checklist: https://getyourshittogether.org/ https://getyourshittogether.org/ Others in this thread have talked about safety deposit boxes and buried crates. I'd add that you can just give some trusted party a normal encrypted USB flash drive, and eliminate the risk of getting absolutely rinsed out in the event of a house burglary by splitting the password amongst an arbitrary number of your other contacts using the Shamir's Secret Sharing algorithm.
- sshine 3y ago
  I call this a Horcrux. Also, unless your arbitrary number of friends are cryptographers, it's a sure way for them to collectively lose your shit.
  - atoav 3y ago
    I'd say a regular will, sealed at a notary is just okay. If you are really paranoid, why not write a service that works like a dead mans switch and when you don't trigger it for n days it sends all the keys to the kingdom to those who should receive them.
    - pr0zac 3y ago
      Google actually provides this service: https://myaccount.google.com/inactive?pli=1 https://myaccount.google.com/inactive?pli=1 At this point I've moved almost everything off Google and basically now only use my Gmail account for logins on websites I don't want to give my real email address to and to keep Inactive Account Manager setup to send the necessary info to get into my 1Password account to my brother if I die. I have a will setup with all my financial details and have set beneficiaries everywhere but this feels like a good backup in case I forget to update it with something or my family has trouble gaining access using other means.
      - ed 3y ago
        That’s a helpful link! Do you know if google allows access to Gmail once inactivity is triggered? Ideally my contacts could use it to recover access to my password manager.
danielnoiz 3y ago
I've had this[0] bookmarked for a while. A good list of things to keep note of somewhere safe. Probably the old "3-2-1" backup method at minimum. [0] https://www.bogleheads.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=119346 https://www.bogleheads.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=119346
danielvaughn 3y ago
My brother-in-law's mother passed away last year and he was in a similar situation. Even beyond the digital realm, there are so many details in a person's life that have to be attended to. Insurance, mortgage, vehicle ownership, etc etc. It's really an overwhelming process and it took a toll on him. I've been thinking about building a platform to help prepare for and guide families who are faced with this kind of situation.
- bityard 3y ago
  I think the hard part is more that it's difficult to focus on the business decisions against the background of a loved one's death, more than the process itself is difficult. You pretty much need an estate lawyer just to navigate all of the legal stuff associated with a person's passing, and I went through this a few years ago with my own father. But the majority of attorneys who handle estates can also handle all of the financial and personal details as well. The only times this really NEEDS to get complicated is when the estate has a negative net worth (which means a potential lack of funds to close the estate), contains businesses that need to be sold or split up, or when survivors fight each other for their percentage of the inheritance.
- detourdog 3y ago
  I had to go through this for my Mom an ex-pat in Israel. The account I was using was a joint-schwab account we had shared for 2 decades. I mentioned to Schwab that she had passed and they froze the account until I could prove the estate was less than $14 Million. Needless to say this was a disaster as I was in a foreign country writing checks left and right. The issue was that it was foreign addressed account of a US domiciled bank. The IRS places the liability of the taxes on the bank if the estate is over $12 Million. Schwab would recognise a letter from the IRS stating that or any US probate court. My Mom's estate with no US assets has no US based probate court access. The IRS rule was enacted after our joint-account was opened and blew up our estate plan. Needless to say in 30 years I only had one problem with Schwab (which I had praised as the best bank ever until that moment). I have been unwinding all of my families Schwab accounts.
ubermonkey 3y ago
Let me add one other bit. I had a similar experience about 18 months ago when my friend A. suddenly died. He was fit and healthy, but for some reason had a seizure on a bike ride, crashed, and that was the end of his story. Unfortunately for his widow, she and he were not on a family account with Apple, and so it took a LOT of rigmarole to even access, say, the photos on his phone. Apple now has a "Legacy Contact" feature you can enable; this is a VERY VERY GOOD IDEA FOR MOST PEOPLE. I assume Google has something similar if you're on Android. The tl;dr is really "you just gotta have a plan." When you go, next week or decades from now, it'll be hard for those you leave behind. Do whatever you can to make it easier for them.
JohnMakin 3y ago
I have a deadman switch where if I don’t log into a service for 90 days it sends all my passwords and information to my closest living relative.
- macinjosh 3y ago
  If you'd be willing I'd be interested to know more about how you did this.
  - em-bee 3y ago
    i am interested too.
  - k1t 3y ago
    Easy option: https://www.deadmansswitch.net/ https://www.deadmansswitch.net/
    - wild_egg 3y ago
      Seems there's also a similar .com one
    - pmckenna 3y ago
      I just have to hope the service lives longer than I do
  - JohnMakin 3y ago
    My system is a little custom and complicated and tailored for me specifically, but basically my device periodically sends a ping to a service I built in cloud. I also have something like the google inactive account manager set up which is probably easiest for most people who use gmail: https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/3036546?hl=en https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/3036546?hl=en
  - akvadrako 3y ago
    Bitwarden has a service for this, fully E2EE.
RalfWausE 3y ago
Its not just about passing away, even a sudden incapacitation from which you do recover may pose a bit of a challenge for the relatives: Some time ago my dad had some severe heart problems which lead to him being hospitalised for multiple months and a lengthy recovery where he was in full "vegetable" mode in the beginning. As he is somewhat of a "patriarch" personality the whole family finances, insurances etc. where all on his personal system. It really was "fun" to sort everything out for us and even more "fun" for himself making any sense of his whole accounting sheme after suffering some memory loss during the whole ordeal. So... having some "letter of last resort" deposed somewhere may even benefit yourself...
- em-bee 3y ago
  that's what would scare me the most. to forget my passwords due to some accident. if i pass away it wouldn't matter to me, but the thought of recovering from an illness but then not being able to access things that i had before is horrifying.
r3trohack3r 3y ago
I’m sorry to hear about your brother. > all my passwords and credentials are in my password manager, and the password to that was only in my head. It’s not just death I worry about. Anything that causes me to lose my memory of the password, from disease to head injury, leaves those trying to help me locked out of everything. A password manager is an incredibly helpful tool to leave behind, it’s a compiled list of all vendors you have registered an online account with. But, IIUC, without legal authority to access those accounts on my behalf it might not be sufficient. I’m planning to talk to an attorney that specializes in taking care of the legal side too. IIUC there are accounts you need legal authority to access even if you have the password. For example, if I give my friend the password to my 401k with the purpose of managing my estate, them using that password can put them in a legally gray area. Also planning to work out a rough order of importance and context for a subset of accounts can help. Like writing down which financial vendor is managing the life insurance policy and whether that’s tied to my employer or not (if I lose my job leading up to my death, I.e. during a long battle with an injury, will I lose my life insurance before it pays out?) A “red binder” project is on my families short list - the “I’m dead or incapacitated, here’s what you do” playbook. The above is how I’m thinking about things. I would love to hear more thoughts/perspectives
- WorldMaker 3y ago
  > But, IIUC, without legal authority to access those accounts on my behalf it might not be sufficient. Relatedly, most digital accounts explicitly don't survive the user in their Terms of Service agreements. I think there are a lot of legal battles to come over digital inheritance rights for accounts like Movies Anywhere and Steam and App Store purchases.
phpisthebest 3y ago
I keep a hard card in my safe next to my property titles, and other important paper work that has my bitwarden master password on it. From there who ever processes my estate should have no problems accessing everything
tomjen3 3y ago
I am sorry about your brother. When we talk about these things it is always assumed that we want our family to have access to our digital lives after we die. I have lots of pictures from shared memories that I want my family to have - and they already do. Other things I want to die with me - things that were not shared with my family before I died shouldn't be shared with them after I die. Why is it that we generally assume that we should get access to other peoples private stuff because they are dead? Again, not trying to make this an attack on you. And of course I am excepting getting access to bank accounts and insurance.
benreesman 3y ago
My condolences about the loss of your brother. My kid brother passed away a few years ago as well, and his digital footprint is one of the most vivid portraits of his last years, and to me a treasure beyond accounting. I strongly second the imperative to preserve as much as possible in the event that any of us suffer a mischief.
patrick451 3y ago
I'm genuinely curious why this needs to be done. Maybe I'm weird, but I don't think I have anything valuable online that my family would want. Of course, there are all my financial accounts, but I would think that just a password wouldn't do them much good with those, at least to legally drain them. I would think (and could be wrong) they would need to go through legal channels for that. What else is there? I can't imagine they want download my email which is mostly just business transactions anyway.
- joe5150 3y ago
  I can think of a handful of things that it might be nice or convenient for someone to be able to access (subscription services and whatnot), but I agree that it seems legally unwise to encourage anyone to try to log into my financial accounts and move money around after I die. Naming a beneficiary is a sounder strategy.

by OskarS 3y ago

bombcar 3y ago

This is one of the reasons that I’ve begun to pare down the number of online financial accounts I have, even though churning for bonuses is fun. Every single one will have to be dealt with eventually by someone, so if I can reduce the number of banks I deal with it’s worth it, even at some small cost of not being “perfectly optimal”.

OJFord 3y ago
Banks are the last thing I'd worry about (I wouldn't) - they're highly regulated, audited, and have been dealing with this forever, since before 'passwords'.
- bombcar 3y ago
  I have no worry about the funds being lost. It’s just imagining my heirs having to contact and close fifty+ accounts.
  - kemotep 3y ago
    Additionally, if you don’t list a beneficiary on any of these accounts, they have to go through probate court to gain access. The fewer hurdles and headaches that your loved ones have to go through the better. Having dealt with this early this past year with a family member, having the list of “chores” to do upon passing helps and reduces the headaches. Especially if those funds are necessary to pay for the sudden bills that a funeral and so on can bring up.
  - rokizero 3y ago
    Serious question: How common is having dozens of accounts? I live in NL and have 3 at the same bank. Why would anyone have 50+ accounts?
    - saikia81 3y ago
      The only reasons I can imagine are fund transfer times, and some isolation security for big amounts. As a fellow dutchie, I just use one bank for personal, and one for my business.
    - throw0101b 3y ago
      Someone may have chequing+saving at one bank, a stock brokerage (or retirement savings) account at another institution, and a may have credit card(s) from completely different one(s). So that could potentially be (at least) three different financially-related accounts.
    - macinjosh 3y ago
      That dude is probably quite wealthy.
      - jonhohle 3y ago
        It’s not necessarily related to wealth (except that you need some savings), but when ING Direct was a thing my wife and I had an account for every savings goal and used it as our “envelope” system. There was no cost per account and you could open one in seconds, so we had a bunch of low value (dozens of dollars! Dozens!) accounts for saving for our next phone or vacation. That could have been done with a spreadsheet, but it was less work to just make separate accounts.
dumpster_fire 3y ago
Yeah I used to have a massive spreadsheet tracking the entirety of household finances. I was worried that no one would know where the money was if I suddenly died, so I started a monthly finance 1:1 with my spouse. Even wrote an "upon death or incapacitation" playbook for her. The second session was just her saying WTF I can't keep track of the location, ownership and tax benefits of 40 accounts! I've since closed 3/4 of all accounts because of that.
- bombcar 3y ago
  The killer for me was working out how much time I was spending playing Excel Warrior and how much it was “making” me and realizing that I was working in my free time for Pennie’s.
  - darkwater 3y ago
    Good and honest realization. It seems easy once you do it but it can be really hard to actually get to that point.
  - em-bee 3y ago
    that is what keeps me from getting into all this detailed finance management or worse trading, likewise any other side business that could earn some money but just isn't the kind of work i want to do. making a budget is useful, as is tracking your expenses, but that's about it for me.

xmdx 3y ago

Had the same experience with my dad passing recently, we had access to everything because we know the passwords he uses and he was ok with sharing those with us. Will definitely look into the 1password emergency kit, thanks for mentioning it. 2fa is the other big challenge after that.

pmckenna 3y ago

Weirdly this is something I’ve been thinking about a lot recently. I had no idea 1Password provided a recovery kit until you mentioned it. Just had a look and looks good. I’ll definitely go through the steps, but I’m wondering what the best way to store it is. Feels weird keeping a document lying around giving access to all your passwords, bank cards, finances etc. I’ll have a think about storage.

lm28469 3y ago
> I had no idea 1Password provided a recovery kit until you mentioned it. There are people out there with 1password and no recovery kit ? Some people like to live dangerously
mathgorges 3y ago
Banks’ safe deposit boxes are a good choice if there are any near you, though they’re often expensive. If you have a lawyer/attorney that you trust they’re often in the habit of securely storing physical documents, but again, expensive. Personally, I (a cheap-ass) keep a copy in a wooden box buried underground in a secure location along with a few other things. However, the security of physical things remains a difficult problem that is most easily solved with money!

nicechianti 3y ago

[dead]

not_the_fda 3y ago

I've recently been planning for my death, no urgent need, but you never know. I've put a backup of my keepass passwords on a USB as well as a printout of the passwords and the master password in a firebox. I also keep a list of assets and financial accounts in there along with birth certificates and passports. My spouse and I both have a key. I would have used a safe deposit box but those are disappearing.

justanideaortwo 3y ago
Please remember that USB storage needs to be recharged every so often, or the data will be lost.

hoherd 3y ago

I had a similar situation where I lost my brother very unexpectedly. I ended up having to run a password cracker on his windows account because nobody had a recovery email. Thankfully his windows credentials were not very strong and his gaming GPU was able to crack the password in a few days using a Linux livecd, and I was able to expand from there into his 1Password account. Like you, I realized that having a trusted second party with the keys to my digital kingdom would be a wise choice in case of a disaster.

hoseja 3y ago

I'm with the other guy. Your unique pattern of electronic activity has ceased irrecoverably. No need for your patterns of electronic activity in computers to be any different.

petee 3y ago

Another consideration, when my dad passed we had his passwords but not his phone or tablet pins/patterns. Both devices are encrypted, and the samsung I believe is set to wipe after a number of failed attempts. While there probably isn't anything on them, it's always been a pain to not know.

ThrowAway1922A 3y ago
> While there probably isn't anything on them, it's always been a pain to not know. I know I wouldn't care because I'd be dead, but I really do not want my family getting on to my personal devices after I'm dead. Those are things that I will never give them the passwords for, not everything is their business.
- cdelsolar 3y ago
  yeah same here. Do I have to give out my passwords, or can I just make a doc with important things?
  - petee 3y ago
    Doesn't matter as much what you do or how, but more importantly that you've communicated it to the people who will have to deal with your stuff if you were to kick the bucket tomorrow. My parents simply made a list of passwords on a piece of paper, buried with the other important papers.
  - em-bee 3y ago
    it depends on where the important stuff is. i have all the family photos on encrypted devices, and the most efficient way to share them is to share the passwords for those devices. my phone they don't need because the important stuff from the phone is backed up anyways, so they just need that backup. so i guess the easiest way is to keep separate backups of stuff you want to keep private and stuff you want to share.
  - shever73 3y ago
    I have a doc, which is password-protected and shared with my wife. It contains details of bank accounts, how to access shares, who we're insured with and passwords / passcodes for things she might need access to.

kqr 3y ago

I'm lucky enough to never have been put in this situation, so please excuse my ignorance: why does someone need to be able to sign in to my accounts when I'm no longer?

maxfurman 3y ago
Anything with recurring billing needs to be cancelled, for a start.
- praseodym 3y ago
  Call the deceased person's bank to cancel all credit cards in their name and that's taken care of.
  - evanriley 3y ago
    Doesn't work for all services. Some services will, if unable to charge the card,send whatever amount to collections, and now they have to deal with that.
    - bee_rider 3y ago
      Debt collectors are persistent, but hey at least if they follow me to Hell maybe they can take a tour, check out apartments for their stay.
      - devnullbrain 3y ago
        Or pester your widow(er)
  - zo1 3y ago
    You'd think it's that easy. Some places literally are unable to do anything unless you're some sort of "signatory" or the actual account holder. No amount of if, buts, maybes, and certified/stamped copies of death certificates will convince them. I couldn't even cancel the health insurance company's recurring payments after a death. And they had the audacity to send a "how was your hospital stay" questionnaire to the account holder's email after they were "discharged" by the hospital.

josephd79 3y ago

Now that I think about it, I should probably do the same. I use Bitwarden and they allow you to add an 'emergency contact' that is granted access after X amount of days.

itsthecourier 3y ago

LastPass let you put two emails as your family members and you setup a 30 day limit to show you are alive. If your loved ones require access to your passwords and you are not there for 30 days, Lastpass release your passwords to them

woleium 3y ago
But we don't use LastPass after they have demonstrated over and over that they are not to be trusted with our secrets, right?
- tome 3y ago
  And it means they must be keeping the recovery passwords in plaintext, so it just gets worse...
  - digging 3y ago
    not necessarily, it may send them an email inviting them to create an account with control of your account.
  - 0cf8612b2e1e 3y ago
    The email does not have to be the password. Something like, “password is taped to the back of my diploma”

swader999 3y ago

The finger doesn't need to be alive to unlock the phone. But yeah, don't put your loved ones through that.

DicIfTEx 3y ago

Useful checklist: https://getyourshittogether.org/ https://getyourshittogether.org/ Others in this thread have talked about safety deposit boxes and buried crates. I'd add that you can just give some trusted party a normal encrypted USB flash drive, and eliminate the risk of getting absolutely rinsed out in the event of a house burglary by splitting the password amongst an arbitrary number of your other contacts using the Shamir's Secret Sharing algorithm.

sshine 3y ago
I call this a Horcrux. Also, unless your arbitrary number of friends are cryptographers, it's a sure way for them to collectively lose your shit.
- atoav 3y ago
  I'd say a regular will, sealed at a notary is just okay. If you are really paranoid, why not write a service that works like a dead mans switch and when you don't trigger it for n days it sends all the keys to the kingdom to those who should receive them.
  - pr0zac 3y ago
    Google actually provides this service: https://myaccount.google.com/inactive?pli=1 https://myaccount.google.com/inactive?pli=1 At this point I've moved almost everything off Google and basically now only use my Gmail account for logins on websites I don't want to give my real email address to and to keep Inactive Account Manager setup to send the necessary info to get into my 1Password account to my brother if I die. I have a will setup with all my financial details and have set beneficiaries everywhere but this feels like a good backup in case I forget to update it with something or my family has trouble gaining access using other means.
    - ed 3y ago
      That’s a helpful link! Do you know if google allows access to Gmail once inactivity is triggered? Ideally my contacts could use it to recover access to my password manager.

danielnoiz 3y ago

I've had this[0] bookmarked for a while. A good list of things to keep note of somewhere safe. Probably the old "3-2-1" backup method at minimum. [0] https://www.bogleheads.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=119346 https://www.bogleheads.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=119346

danielvaughn 3y ago

My brother-in-law's mother passed away last year and he was in a similar situation. Even beyond the digital realm, there are so many details in a person's life that have to be attended to. Insurance, mortgage, vehicle ownership, etc etc. It's really an overwhelming process and it took a toll on him. I've been thinking about building a platform to help prepare for and guide families who are faced with this kind of situation.

bityard 3y ago
I think the hard part is more that it's difficult to focus on the business decisions against the background of a loved one's death, more than the process itself is difficult. You pretty much need an estate lawyer just to navigate all of the legal stuff associated with a person's passing, and I went through this a few years ago with my own father. But the majority of attorneys who handle estates can also handle all of the financial and personal details as well. The only times this really NEEDS to get complicated is when the estate has a negative net worth (which means a potential lack of funds to close the estate), contains businesses that need to be sold or split up, or when survivors fight each other for their percentage of the inheritance.
detourdog 3y ago
I had to go through this for my Mom an ex-pat in Israel. The account I was using was a joint-schwab account we had shared for 2 decades. I mentioned to Schwab that she had passed and they froze the account until I could prove the estate was less than $14 Million. Needless to say this was a disaster as I was in a foreign country writing checks left and right. The issue was that it was foreign addressed account of a US domiciled bank. The IRS places the liability of the taxes on the bank if the estate is over $12 Million. Schwab would recognise a letter from the IRS stating that or any US probate court. My Mom's estate with no US assets has no US based probate court access. The IRS rule was enacted after our joint-account was opened and blew up our estate plan. Needless to say in 30 years I only had one problem with Schwab (which I had praised as the best bank ever until that moment). I have been unwinding all of my families Schwab accounts.

ubermonkey 3y ago

Let me add one other bit. I had a similar experience about 18 months ago when my friend A. suddenly died. He was fit and healthy, but for some reason had a seizure on a bike ride, crashed, and that was the end of his story. Unfortunately for his widow, she and he were not on a family account with Apple, and so it took a LOT of rigmarole to even access, say, the photos on his phone. Apple now has a "Legacy Contact" feature you can enable; this is a VERY VERY GOOD IDEA FOR MOST PEOPLE. I assume Google has something similar if you're on Android. The tl;dr is really "you just gotta have a plan." When you go, next week or decades from now, it'll be hard for those you leave behind. Do whatever you can to make it easier for them.

JohnMakin 3y ago

I have a deadman switch where if I don’t log into a service for 90 days it sends all my passwords and information to my closest living relative.

macinjosh 3y ago
If you'd be willing I'd be interested to know more about how you did this.
- em-bee 3y ago
  i am interested too.
- k1t 3y ago
  Easy option: https://www.deadmansswitch.net/ https://www.deadmansswitch.net/
  - wild_egg 3y ago
    Seems there's also a similar .com one
  - pmckenna 3y ago
    I just have to hope the service lives longer than I do
- JohnMakin 3y ago
  My system is a little custom and complicated and tailored for me specifically, but basically my device periodically sends a ping to a service I built in cloud. I also have something like the google inactive account manager set up which is probably easiest for most people who use gmail: https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/3036546?hl=en https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/3036546?hl=en
- akvadrako 3y ago
  Bitwarden has a service for this, fully E2EE.

RalfWausE 3y ago

Its not just about passing away, even a sudden incapacitation from which you do recover may pose a bit of a challenge for the relatives: Some time ago my dad had some severe heart problems which lead to him being hospitalised for multiple months and a lengthy recovery where he was in full "vegetable" mode in the beginning. As he is somewhat of a "patriarch" personality the whole family finances, insurances etc. where all on his personal system. It really was "fun" to sort everything out for us and even more "fun" for himself making any sense of his whole accounting sheme after suffering some memory loss during the whole ordeal. So... having some "letter of last resort" deposed somewhere may even benefit yourself...

em-bee 3y ago
that's what would scare me the most. to forget my passwords due to some accident. if i pass away it wouldn't matter to me, but the thought of recovering from an illness but then not being able to access things that i had before is horrifying.

r3trohack3r 3y ago

I’m sorry to hear about your brother. > all my passwords and credentials are in my password manager, and the password to that was only in my head. It’s not just death I worry about. Anything that causes me to lose my memory of the password, from disease to head injury, leaves those trying to help me locked out of everything. A password manager is an incredibly helpful tool to leave behind, it’s a compiled list of all vendors you have registered an online account with. But, IIUC, without legal authority to access those accounts on my behalf it might not be sufficient. I’m planning to talk to an attorney that specializes in taking care of the legal side too. IIUC there are accounts you need legal authority to access even if you have the password. For example, if I give my friend the password to my 401k with the purpose of managing my estate, them using that password can put them in a legally gray area. Also planning to work out a rough order of importance and context for a subset of accounts can help. Like writing down which financial vendor is managing the life insurance policy and whether that’s tied to my employer or not (if I lose my job leading up to my death, I.e. during a long battle with an injury, will I lose my life insurance before it pays out?) A “red binder” project is on my families short list - the “I’m dead or incapacitated, here’s what you do” playbook. The above is how I’m thinking about things. I would love to hear more thoughts/perspectives

WorldMaker 3y ago
> But, IIUC, without legal authority to access those accounts on my behalf it might not be sufficient. Relatedly, most digital accounts explicitly don't survive the user in their Terms of Service agreements. I think there are a lot of legal battles to come over digital inheritance rights for accounts like Movies Anywhere and Steam and App Store purchases.

phpisthebest 3y ago

I keep a hard card in my safe next to my property titles, and other important paper work that has my bitwarden master password on it. From there who ever processes my estate should have no problems accessing everything

tomjen3 3y ago

I am sorry about your brother. When we talk about these things it is always assumed that we want our family to have access to our digital lives after we die. I have lots of pictures from shared memories that I want my family to have - and they already do. Other things I want to die with me - things that were not shared with my family before I died shouldn't be shared with them after I die. Why is it that we generally assume that we should get access to other peoples private stuff because they are dead? Again, not trying to make this an attack on you. And of course I am excepting getting access to bank accounts and insurance.

benreesman 3y ago

My condolences about the loss of your brother. My kid brother passed away a few years ago as well, and his digital footprint is one of the most vivid portraits of his last years, and to me a treasure beyond accounting. I strongly second the imperative to preserve as much as possible in the event that any of us suffer a mischief.

patrick451 3y ago

I'm genuinely curious why this needs to be done. Maybe I'm weird, but I don't think I have anything valuable online that my family would want. Of course, there are all my financial accounts, but I would think that just a password wouldn't do them much good with those, at least to legally drain them. I would think (and could be wrong) they would need to go through legal channels for that. What else is there? I can't imagine they want download my email which is mostly just business transactions anyway.

joe5150 3y ago
I can think of a handful of things that it might be nice or convenient for someone to be able to access (subscription services and whatnot), but I agree that it seems legally unwise to encourage anyone to try to log into my financial accounts and move money around after I die. Naming a beneficiary is a sounder strategy.