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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Eh, I won’t worry about that while my parents are still alive. More worried about me having to handle all their stuff.
All my shit is locked down. Nobody else knows the passwords or codes for it. When I die, it goes with me.
