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.