Comments on: Internet Life After Death

By: Leanne

Leanne — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 19:40:47 +0000

Wow, this is something I’ve never even thought of. Fortunately, I’m in pretty good shape here. My husband and I have an application called “KeePass” that tracks all this information. As long as we both don’t die at once, I’m covered.

But now that you mention it, I’d better pass that information along to our executor!

By: Ryan

Ryan — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 15:02:45 +0000

I think about this all the time. I haven’t come up with a good way to solve it for myself yet, though. I’ve taken the step of listing out for my wife all the accounts that would directly affect my family (bills, bank accounts, etc) but the passwords are in “code” and she hasn’t gotten the code yet. As for sites like facebook, e-mail, etc. I’m honestly not sure what to do about those…

By: Ronnie

Ronnie — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 23:57:14 +0000

Good post.

Just make sure you whatever you do, you don’t save all your passwords onto a disc and leave it at the gym or some ‘Burn After Reading’ antics might ensue.

This old article from the BBC puts a different spin on things….

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/3693242.stm

By: Ramin

Ramin — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 09:07:06 +0000

Seriously good point.

By: on life on line « lucho a lucha

on life on line « lucho a lucha — Sun, 19 Oct 2008 19:35:46 +0000

[...] for which I neither remember the use, nor the username and password. Sholeh wrote a great post about how few of us have provided a way for these accounts to be accessed, maintained, or shut down [...]

By: ez

ez — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 20:54:40 +0000

One might include this as part of a living will as well should you wish to remain living in an incapacitated state. Someone could use the accounts to post information to let others know about your situation. Sites who support OpenID allow us to access sites without multiple credentials. Microsoft created Passport for the same purpose. Though, I don't think Passport went far.

By: Dan Greuel

Dan Greuel — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 09:19:33 +0000

Interesting post. Haven’t thought much about the issue of postmortem account access, but you’re right, it is important.

For a while now, I’ve been using a password manager called 1Password (http://www.1password.com/), available for Mac and iPhone/iPod Touch. There are also web-based password managers such as Clipperz (http://www.clipperz.com). These will create a secure database of all your passwords and sensitive information. You could then give a trusted individual the master key, or print out a hard copy for them.

Some worry about the security issues associated with having everything in one place, but the convenience a password manager provides is GREAT. I can log in to anything with one keystroke, and refer to my database whenever I need to. Plus, it’s much more secure than a spreadsheet.

Might be worth looking into.