I heard a number of stories of people passing away, and their loved ones have to figure out how to navigate their digital “estate”. Things like email credentials, bank accounts, crypto wallets, logins for personal devices, etc. For example, I have a good friend whose husband passed away unexpectedly, and she couldn’t get Apple to unlock his laptop for months, until she provided a death certificate and jumped through additional hoops.
I fell down a rabbit hole of checklists, methods, and technology, and was curious what other people were doing to leave digital assets behind. I’m looking for something that will be privacy-oriented, but still provide access to people who may not be very tech-savvy.
What do other people do? Especially from a technology perspective?
I left a technical recovery guide by scenario. I periodically test the instructions. Each of these are different because of MFA.
Me dead, all devices accessible
Me dead, phone missing
Me dead, computer missing
Me dead, phone and computer missing
Me dead, all devices missing
Left a password manager account break in instruction guide to accompany the scenarios.
This is brilliant! I didn’t consider all the scenarios. And it changes everything.
Can you share details about what those guides look like?
Let me see if I can find a soft copy without the user id / passwords. You can retool to your needs
Be fanatical about your password manager. Example you have an encrypted USB stick, the decrypt code must be in the password manager for the instructions to all work.
That would be greatly appreciated! I considered the USB stick, but didn’t really get as far as where to leave the decrypt code.
Password manager with a recovery phrase tied to an elaborate world wide scavenger hunt
elaborate world wide scavenger hunt
This has been a serious consideration. My family travels any possible chance they get. :D
#1 thing is to make sure all accounts have beneficiaries. Accounts should have a primary beneficiary (your spouse), and if there is the ability to make a secondary beneficiary, see if they will divide it among any children you have . This is of paramount importance.
I know someone who passed away suddenly, and did not have a beneficiary on his “play money” stock account. His widow had to go through a lot of hoops to get access to it.
From there, I am a big believer in paper. I want those statements coming to the house. I file them all, and my wife knows where I put them. If I were to go poof , I’m sure she (with a lot of help from her siblings) would make sure nothing goes unpaid.
The Crypto is a different story, of course. When you can Be Your Own Bank, there are no beneficiaries or contingencies: it’s all keys. I have a bit of crypto in a HW wallet. But, years ago I moved some BTC to Coinbase, and it’s still there after all these years. I am thinking of moving the rest, just to make it easier for people to sell if I do go poof. Yeah , Not Your Keys, Not Your Coins. But it would be tragic if my crypto got lost because I bit it and nobody knew how to operate my wallet.
I have a deadman switch that will activate a worm that will simultaneously devour the entire internet and trigger my house to burn down.
it’s all triggered off my pacemaker. once it pops, the fun just stops.
Aside from your house, you’ve given me great incentive to hunt you down and kill you. 🙃
every morning I look in the mirror and ask myself the question.
Fickle fickle, Travis Bickle, how does your computer worm grow?
What happens when you need to replace your pacemaker?
The internet is devoured a la Dune and their house burns down?
Yeah this one bothers me. My spouse is clueless about technology and our online accounts. When I did estate planning with my lawyer, they said the paperwork would grant access to everything. My spouse’s grown kids (previous marriage) are tech savvy, which helps.
I’ve thought about leaving instructions and passwords on a USB thumb drive, but that idea has a number of flaws.
Leave instructions and passwords on paper
I am a little biased toward 1Password, and they have a guide that has really good points. But in the end, they say to print out their “Emergency Kit” and store it will your will/estate. So, not much better than leaving a password behind (or any other shared secret). I guess I’ll have to set up some sort of irl treasure hunt…
In case you hadn’t seen the news.
I’ve been a paying customer and advocate of 1Password for over a decade but I’ve made the switch to something else.
What is the something else? As far as I can tell, all the password managers suck. Just seemed to me that 1Password sucked less.
For me, I narrowed it down to Bitwarden and Proton Pass.
I found it very hard to test both in parallel so I ended up just kind of making a feel-based call. I think either would have been fine, but I don’t think either is as nice as 1Password.
Bitwarden supports transferring passkeys from other password managers (on iOS anyway) but Proton Pass doesn’t. That was going to be the deciding factor for me, but the transfer failed (I believe this was a failure at the OS level; not Bitwarden’s fault) so I ultimately went with Proton Pass because I felt the interface was a little cleaner.
Vaultwarden if you can manage a selfhosted option. It allows you to set a specified account to be able to take yours over after a delay (in case you die)
I started using Bitwarden only a few months before Proton pass came out. I want to switch, but I’m so lazy. Having the email alias feature built into the password manager would make my life so much easier.
Move to KeePass. It’s simpler in the long run, and they don’t sponsor dirtbags.
My uncle passed unexpectedly a few years ago. He didn’t have any family nearby so I went down with my dad to sort through his shit. This man had an entire spreadsheet with every single account username and password he had printed out. I cannot tell you how much time it saved me. He had a ton of accounts with monthly payments (mostly porn) that I was able to cancel immediately, and we were able to access all his banking stuff.
He also had a hard-drive full of meticulously organized porn, which was depressing to have to wipe to be honest because he had clearly put a lot of time and effort into it.
I dont recommend just a spreadsheet like that in your house tbh but ever since, I created a password manager with one primary password that my partner knows where to find if anything were to happen to me.
Passwords are in Keepass. My son knows the software because he uses it. The master password is written down as part of my estate planning. That will provide access to every account needed to my successors.
I have a second password store with all of my questionable content. Not going to pass that on to the family. Let it all die horribly.
Still need to move local sketchy content to an encrypted volume, without recording a password to access it. Probably this winter. I want to be ready to die by spring.
Nothing. I expect to be the last in my family and honestly don’t care much what happens with my estate after I’m dead. I’ve been thinking about setting up a will for the benefit of my friends and their kids but that’s about it. What little is not found by the tax office after my passing doesn’t matter. None of my accounts no longer matter. My photos and videos no longer matter. My favourite songs and movies no longer matter. My opinions no longer matter. Maybe I should ask for someone to remove any identifiable trace of me online though I don’t really know why anybody should be bothered. In less than a hundred years nobody will know I have ever existed. Maybe some reflection or speck of information I’ve shared at some point will anonymously benefit someone in the future but that’s about it. Whatever remains of me online is just digital dust in the crevices of the information highway that nobody will care to examine anyway. And I’m perfectly fine with it.
Everything encrypted except pirated media on external drives. All personal data encrypted so if i die people are locked out of personal files and will have to wipe the drives to make them usable. Finally if they don’t use linux they might be out of luck with those external drives with media, too.
I have a notebook stashed that has all my accounts and passwords. Told the hubs about it. Should be enough, I dont make accounts willy nilly, so what is important is logged so if I drop dead tomorrow my family can have access without too much stress. It really seems like the simplest way, for my simple accounts. I dont know my lemmy password though haha. I ever lose this device, it’s just gonna be dead.
My father died the begining of this year, getting his passwords was a nightmare. Side note, the fucker was on 4chan. gross. But pen and paper are mostly reliable, barring disasters.
Consider how much you want your family or kids looking at your browser history
My browser history is fine for most teenagers. The other stuff i use incognito mode.
An idea: leave a note on the desktop in some obvious location with your message to them
wuzzup shitheads! I fapped here every night for 30 years. peace out bitches!
like this?
Please clean the tab button with rubbing alcohol.
My main passphrase that unlocks my PW manager is in the same envelope as my testament. My partner knows my excessively long phone passcode by heart.
All my shit is locked down. Nobody else knows the passwords or codes for it. When I die, it goes with me.
I don’t think leaving a password around for your bank account would be legal. It’s handled by inheritance laws so my family will take my death certificate to the bank/lawyer and get the money. Same with every other contract like cell phone and internet.
Everything else stays locked. Why would I give anyone access to my phone, email or laptop? My homelab will work as long as it’s plugged in and then it will just die. Who cares?
One kid get my steam account and the NAS with the proviso they give the family photos on said NAS to the siblings. The other kids get photos.
They don’t need my email full of spam and love letters.
Bank account will hopefully be cleaned out by my future self having a hell of a bender to celebrate my life.
