Ask HN: How do you ensure your family can access your digital life if you die? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How do you ensure your family can access your digital life if you die?

3 pointsghostfoxgod14 comments

I've been thinking about this lately. Most of us have dozens of online accounts, digital assets, and important documents scattered across various services. If something happens to me, my family would have no idea how to access my banking and investment accounts, important documents (wills, insurance, etc.).

I know password managers exist, but they don't solve the "what accounts do I even have?" problem, and most families don't know how to use them. And I don't want to share access to my accounts right now, only after I am no longer alive.

What's your approach? Do you have a system in place, or is this something you've been meaning to figure out but haven't gotten around to?

I'm particularly interested in solutions that work for non-technical family members who might be dealing with grief and stress.

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I maintain a packet of encrypted data that contains an inventory of all of my data repositories along with the credentials needed to access them. It is kept in a physically separated, secure location. I have designated one person to be, effectively, my executor for these things. They have a cert that allows them to decrypt that data. Their task will be to decrypt the inventory list and determine who gets access to what.

For data that I don't want to survive me, I keep it on a server that has a dead-man's switch mechanism that will erase it if I don't reset the switch regularly.

I also make it a point to minimize the amount of this stuff that has to be dealt with (the dead-man's switch is part of this effort). I have no social media accounts anymore, for instance, so nothing needs to be done for that kind of thing.

Wow, that's quite well-thought-out plan. So you mentioned that this encrypted data and its credentials are kept at a physical location and designated one person to be the executor? Is this person someone you know or some firm which handles things like these?

And I don't want to sound rude, but what if the executor passes away before you and you are not aware about it, what's the backup plan?

> Is this person someone you know or some firm which handles things like these?

It's one of my children.

I doubt that they would pass away without me knowing about it since I talk with my children frequently, but if that happened then the plan falls apart a bit. There are actually a couple of failure points aside from that in my plan that could lead to a loss of the data. The odds of that happening are low enough that I'm willing to take that risk, though.

The actually important stuff such as legal documents are kept in a safe deposit box and with my attorney. Those are the only things that I consider to be mandatory, so those are the most recoverable.

That's fair, and it's actually pretty nice that you have thought out about this in such details. Thanks for sharing your wisdom with me, appreciate it :)

I know password managers exist, but they don't solve the "what accounts do I even have?" problem

I keep a list in a simple text file that is encrypted and hidden by appending it to a particular .jpg image file (of which I have thousands). For convenience, I have a little CLI utility I wrote which accepts a filename and key in order to automate retrieval, decryption, viewing/editing, re-encryption and replacing the data in it's hiding place --- all without altering the carrier file's date/time.

I have retrieval instructions in a sealed envelope with my lawyer and a trusted family member --- only to be opened upon my demise.

I keep backups of this along with all my personal and business documents, will, etc.. Basically, I follow the 3-2-1 backup plan (https://www.backblaze.com/blog/the-3-2-1-backup-strategy/).

I carry the "1" part strapped to my wrist at all times (encrypted with Bitlocker) so it is as safe as I am --- if not safer.

https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:6784665

Wow, it's fun reading the innovative ways people are solving for this, thanks for sharing your approach. If you don't mind me asking, can you share some more details about this CLI utility? Does it use some existing solutions like GPG or something similar for the tasks you mentioned?

The CLI is pretty simple, it accepts "key:filename" and performs these steps:

    Open file and search backwards from end looking for marker bytes.

    If found, save the file date/time then extract the data and decrypt using AES. 

    If the decrypted data passes a checksum test, place the data in a temporary file and load the file into a text editor.

    Wait for the test editor to exit. If the file has been changed, retrieve the data from disk, re-encrypt, place it back in it's hiding spot and restore the carrier file's original data/time.

    Lastly, overwrite the temporary file with random data before finally deleting and exit.

By the way, my little CLI can also perform TOTP generation. It will search for a section in the text delimited by "<--- 2FA Start" and "2FA End --->" for a list of "tag:=Base32 key string". To generate a TOTP code and place it into the clipboard, just give it "key:filename,tag".

> If something happens to me, my family would have no idea how...

So, in effect: "If something happens to me, I WILL NO LONGER HAVE any banking or investment accounts, nor insurance, nor a will, nor ...".

Basics -

Keep a detailed, paper-based inventory of your stuff. With complete, noob-ready access information. Updated at least annually. In at least 2 different places, known to reliable family members and/or trusted close, old friends.

Remember that you might have a period of disability or unconsciousness before you pass away. (Or before anyone thinks to act on the possibility that you'll pass away.) During that period, most of your online & cloud-stored stuff could vanish - because no one paid the bills or did other maintenance. Or insurance bills could go unpaid, or heat gets turned off at your cabin up north and the pipes freeze and flood it, or ...

Keep a tight lid on how many places you keep the important stuff (vs. cute cat videos or other relative fluff), and on the complexity of accessing any of it. Those important places get listed first in your inventory, annotated with extra details on what important things are to be found there.

Just thinking out loud, doesn't keeping it offline increases the risk of first of all things getting lost or worse gets accessed by someone you don't intend to pass it on to?

Depends on how organized and secure your physical properties and possessions are. If you've got creepy housemates or relatives, who might dig through your obviously-personal stuff? Yeah, that makes everything 100X harder. But they might also try an Evil Maid Attack, to get your online stuff.

Do you have any trusted, well-organized relative or friend with a decently secure property?

Do local banking regulations allow for access to safe deposit boxes when the owner is not present or deceased?

Could you park the documents in a manila envelope, in the secure file cabinets of the lawyer who drafted your will?

And if you're an Epic-level Ditz, who might (say) accidentally throw $700M of bitcoin in the trash? At some point, you need to have a competent person handle your affairs for you.

No need to over complicate it. Every year around tax time print out your statements and put them in a notebook in a secure place and tell your family members or lawyer where it is. With a death certificate they can access what they need especially if they are the beneficiary.

I don't know how easy is it from where you are from, but a friend of mine lost his dad during covid second wave, and it took him months to get just get access to his dad's bank accounts.

Seems very scary, there might be so many things that he doesn't even know about. I tried searching for this, and it seems like there are billions of dollars left in dormant accounts because no one claimed it, majorly because the person's family don't even know how to access those or worse are not even aware about it.

I am my parents only child - they are both in their 80s.

I’m the beneficiary of all of their accounts. I reviewed where they have their accounts at. As long as I know where there accounts are, if it takes months to get to it - which isn’t the case since I’m the beneficiary, why does it matter? I don’t need their money.

However, they did make me a joint account holder on one of their accounts that had enough money in it to take care of final expenses.

Even if I did have passwords to their other accounts, I wouldn’t access them and start transferring money until it went through all of the level processes when they pass - aside from their joint accounts.

Of course joint accounts does require a fair amount of trust in your children.

Not so fast, at least in some states.

I have gone through this with both my parents. In one case, I needed a death certificate to even get access to the will. (It was held by a lawyer, and at least some lawyers won't let just anybody see the will. I had to prove that I had the right to see it, which meant a death certificate plus being an executor on the will.)

With the will and a death certificate, I went to a bank. They wouldn't tell me anything about the account - not even the amount in it - because I hadn't gone through probate. Well, in that state, I didn't have to go through probate if the estate was less than $100,000. But without knowing how much was in the account, I didn't know if I needed to go through probate! They finally "bent the rules" enough to tell me that, yes, there was enough there that I needed to do probate.

So I applied for probate, which cost $500, and was a slam-dunk because nobody contested and the will said I was the executor. And then the bank would talk to me.

Joint accounts or a trust are much smoother.

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