4 ms·

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

by 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.
    - yjftsjthsd-h 3y ago
      > 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. That feels like an email that deserves an honest response:)
  - humanistbot 3y ago
    Your reply shows that you've never had to do this yourself. It's a lot more complicated than that.
lowercased 3y ago
Being able to unsubscribe to a service, as someone else mentioned. In social media world, posting some final "xyz has passed on. this account will be closing" or similar 'wrap up' activity is often useful.
chasd00 3y ago
When my father in law passed away his wife asked me to get some photos on a thumb drive for her. I knew his password from watching him login, I also went ahead and deleted his browser history.
- ibejoeb 3y ago
  I'd pay for this service
- sonofhans 3y ago
  The real hero is always in the comments. That was very humane of you.
ncann 3y ago
If you are perfectly prepared for your passing and made your will, arranged all the financial stuffs, told your friends and family everything needed etc. then you don't need to give access to your accounts. But many people don't have that luxury. When death is unexpected, things get messy, e.g you may want to continue paying the mortgage on time, or shutdown social media accounts, or make announcement of their passing using those accounts, or contact their lawyer, or cancel subscribed services, and so on.
bluGill 3y ago
When my dad died my mom needed access to all the accounts to do things like pay the electric bill. That is all done online so without him logging into the online bill pay she would have no way to know what was owed. I suppose after a few months of not paying they would send a paper bill, but then there are late fees and the like.
Nzen 3y ago
While most people have focused on post-mortem account recovery, that's not the only occasion. The small company I've worked for has had the last three administrators leave the company in arrears for a time with quick departures and little handoff of procedures. It is all the more frustrating because we overtly use a shared password managment tool for accessing client servers.
OskarS 3y ago
Lots of other people have mentioned very good practical reasons (and you can read the linked post for others, like people being unsure of what the password to the Vim FTP is), but there are lots of good sentimental ones as well. When something like this happens, you lose your mind slightly, and you become obsessed with preserving whatever is possible to preserve of the person. I went so far as to record his voice-mail message, just because I felt i needed to. Of all the internet stuff, the thing that was most important to us was photos: he was a photographer, and he used a photo-uploading service (I think it was Google Photos, but I'm unsure, it's been a couple of years) and I was able to get an archive with all his thousands of photographs. Eventually, I put everything I could possibly find (computers, internet services, whatever) into one big zip file, and put it on my local NAS (which is backed up to the cloud). I don't think I'll ever have the heart to go through it again, but my brother had young kids who never really got to know their dad. I figure one day they might want to look at it (even if it's 30 years from now) so it makes me feel good to know that it's been preserved.

by 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.
  - yjftsjthsd-h 3y ago
    > 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. That feels like an email that deserves an honest response:)
- humanistbot 3y ago
  Your reply shows that you've never had to do this yourself. It's a lot more complicated than that.

lowercased 3y ago

Being able to unsubscribe to a service, as someone else mentioned. In social media world, posting some final "xyz has passed on. this account will be closing" or similar 'wrap up' activity is often useful.

chasd00 3y ago

When my father in law passed away his wife asked me to get some photos on a thumb drive for her. I knew his password from watching him login, I also went ahead and deleted his browser history.

ibejoeb 3y ago
I'd pay for this service
sonofhans 3y ago
The real hero is always in the comments. That was very humane of you.

ncann 3y ago

If you are perfectly prepared for your passing and made your will, arranged all the financial stuffs, told your friends and family everything needed etc. then you don't need to give access to your accounts. But many people don't have that luxury. When death is unexpected, things get messy, e.g you may want to continue paying the mortgage on time, or shutdown social media accounts, or make announcement of their passing using those accounts, or contact their lawyer, or cancel subscribed services, and so on.

bluGill 3y ago

When my dad died my mom needed access to all the accounts to do things like pay the electric bill. That is all done online so without him logging into the online bill pay she would have no way to know what was owed. I suppose after a few months of not paying they would send a paper bill, but then there are late fees and the like.

Nzen 3y ago

While most people have focused on post-mortem account recovery, that's not the only occasion. The small company I've worked for has had the last three administrators leave the company in arrears for a time with quick departures and little handoff of procedures. It is all the more frustrating because we overtly use a shared password managment tool for accessing client servers.

OskarS 3y ago

Lots of other people have mentioned very good practical reasons (and you can read the linked post for others, like people being unsure of what the password to the Vim FTP is), but there are lots of good sentimental ones as well. When something like this happens, you lose your mind slightly, and you become obsessed with preserving whatever is possible to preserve of the person. I went so far as to record his voice-mail message, just because I felt i needed to. Of all the internet stuff, the thing that was most important to us was photos: he was a photographer, and he used a photo-uploading service (I think it was Google Photos, but I'm unsure, it's been a couple of years) and I was able to get an archive with all his thousands of photographs. Eventually, I put everything I could possibly find (computers, internet services, whatever) into one big zip file, and put it on my local NAS (which is backed up to the cloud). I don't think I'll ever have the heart to go through it again, but my brother had young kids who never really got to know their dad. I figure one day they might want to look at it (even if it's 30 years from now) so it makes me feel good to know that it's been preserved.