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Ask HN: Granting access to your digital life in case of your death

12 points by fearingreprisal ↗ HN
Please forgive me if this is an already answered question.

Lately I've been giving thought to how to implement some kind of system to ensure that should I die or become otherwise incapacitated my next of kin will be able to gain access to the variety of online accounts I use. I'm not necessarily concerned with ownership of said accounts, access will be enough. I don't necessarily use my legal name on all accounts and I am not an American, so I imagine relying on legal means to establish ownership would prove too problematic. Due to the significant number of different accounts that I use overall ( think in the realm of 10-20 ), there is a challenge posed to keep an updated table of username/password combinations in a secure manner.

Is this something other people on HN are thinking about? And if so, how are you approaching the issue?

I'm currently considering using a password manager with a centrally stored database to handle this, and providing a way to access this in my will. I imagine I have made oversights here. I would definitely appreciate any advice. Thank you.

14 comments

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laddng
Gmail gives you the capability to automatically give access to a list of emails if you're inactive on your Gmail for x amount of time: https://www.google.com/settings/account/inactive

You can just send the master password to your password manager in that email as well.

fearingreprisal
Thank you for this suggestion, that sounds like something good to keep in mind! It makes sense that companies are beginning to think about this as well.
brudgers
Any serious approach probably entails hiring an attorney. Everything else is pretty much just fooling around and hoping it works. Good luck.
bronco21016
Someone made a similar post in another thread on this subject.

I don’t doubt the idea of needing a lawyer but I wish someone would respond with what role a lawyer plays and how the setup works. It doesn’t help much to say ‘hire a lawyer’ when you’re not even sure what you should be asking a lawyer to setup.

fearingreprisal
Exactly. I'm not asking what the legal requirements here are. I'm trying to figure out the best technical means. As my post stated, I imagine using legal means to obtain access to my online accounts to be impractical. I'm a reasonably privacy conscious individual and for the most part I've endeavoured to make it difficult, if not impossible, to link these online identities with my real life identity while I'm alive, let alone after I'm dead.
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ljp_206
I have toyed around with using a secret splitting scheme like Shamir's Secret Sharing to deliver a split-up master password to an encrypted file. Then my family members (or any others you trust) would be given the resulting passcodes. You can configure the split to be into N pieces, and require a certain minimum of pieces to reconstitute the secret, so several trusted parties would be required to coordinate in the event of your incapacitation. This is comforting as A, this cooperation is extremely likely in the event of my death, and B, the more people who have to coordinate would probably vastly reduce the chance of the splitting scheme being used against me.

The list of issues with it are relatively apparent (where to permanently store the password database; are the secret holders trustworthy?) but it'd be a fun rainy day project to create. I've toyed with the idea of laser engraving metal cards with the password shares to make it more 'permanent.'

ObsoleteNerd
Certain people have a printed copy of my keepass database password and know how to access it on onedrive (from one of my devices, no direct access) if they need to, so they can at least access bank accounts and health plan and all that.

They also know to log in to my PCs and null-write all the drives. ;)

tapvt
I sincerely don’t mean to sound flippant, but, if I’m dead, my digital legacy is none of my business anymore.
elamje
It’s not specific to passwords, but I’m trying to make https://lifeboxhq.com a place to store your digital legacy and send to family years down the road! This is an excellent feature request. I want to move to an open protocol to making these time capsules, but haven’t given it enough thought yet, but feel free to check out the service.

I envision it being used for all sorts of files And timelines.