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Show HN: If you lose your memory, how to regain access to your computer?

eljojo.github.io

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Re: Show HN: If you lose your memory, how to regain access to your computer?

#111

Post by MiddleEndian »

nightshift1 wrote: post #74
eljojo wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

do you store stuff in a bank? could you tell me more about it? my account gives me access to one for free and been meaning to put a yubikey there for a while but never have

Safe deposit boxes are not safe. There are many stories of peoples stuff going missing. ex: https://www.cbc.ca/news/safety-deposit-box-protection-1.7338... https://archive.is/www.nytimes.com/2019/07/19/business/safe-...

What if you RAID01 it, so you have four safety deposit boxes, two with the first half of your password, two with the second half of your password? Then no snoop at a particular bank would be able to get your password, but also if one or two go missing, the password won't be lost. And you just check all four boxes once or twice a year to make sure everything is good.

Re: Show HN: If you lose your memory, how to regain access to your computer?

#112

Post by saulpw »

jerezzprime wrote: post #94
nightshift1 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Safe deposit boxes are not safe. There are many stories of peoples stuff going missing. ex: https://www.cbc.ca/news/safety-deposit-box-protection-1.7338... https://archive.is/www.nytimes.com/2019/07/19/business/safe-...

Maybe not safe for valuables. What about stuff that has no value to anyone else? I'm not a villain from Ocean's Eleven, no one is stealing my passwords to break into my elaborate safe.

What I found out when I was burgled, was that they don't care. I had nothing valuable in my firesafe but they still took it wholesale. I found some papers from it drifting around outside afterwards like they had dumped it out. But not my passport or SSN card. The lock was even broken so they could have just opened it to see that and saved themselves the lift. But again, they don't care.

Re: Show HN: If you lose your memory, how to regain access to your computer?

#113

Post by amenghra »

0cf8612b2e1e wrote: post #66
ses1984 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another solution is to engrave your secret on something that’s stable up to household fire temperatures.

A real innovation from the Bitcoin world! There are several physical password store systems that they have suggested for this kind of use case. The simplest is basically using a nail to punch out a password onto a piece of sheet metal.

Articles such as https://blog.lopp.net/metal-bitcoin-seed-storage-stress-test... will help you pick among the various seed stores out there.

Re: Show HN: If you lose your memory, how to regain access to your computer?

#114

Post by alsetmusic »

paulgerhardt wrote: post #104
repiret wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is what I do too, but be warned about “fire proof” - a fire that results in the total loss of your house will create enough heat for enough time that fireproof gun safes and smaller fireproof lockboxes will be destroyed, or even if not, their contents will get hot enough to combust anyway. A bank safe deposit box offers a different security profile that’s probably more robust against fire because banks burn less…

Just went through this. Sample size one: While the fire resulted in the total loss of the house it was actually the water from the fire department not the heat that did proportionally more damage. As a mental model you shouldn’t think of it as “what if my house burns down?” so much as “what if nice strangers roll up to my windows and chainsaw through my roof and spray 50,000 gallons of water in here?” Yes everything…

This is very interesting and will inform changes in how I secure some items. Thanks for the new perspective.

Re: Show HN: If you lose your memory, how to regain access to your computer?

#115

Post by bsza »

eljojo wrote: post #43
modeless wrote: post #5

For this purpose Google offers "Inactive Account Manager" AKA a dead man's switch.

I don't use Google :(

Set up a Github action to send out the secret if you don't commit to a repo every x days? You could even combine it with secret sharing to make sure your friends can't access it unless you're really in trouble.

Re: Show HN: If you lose your memory, how to regain access to your computer?

#119

Post by Loughla »

paulgerhardt wrote: post #104
repiret wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is what I do too, but be warned about “fire proof” - a fire that results in the total loss of your house will create enough heat for enough time that fireproof gun safes and smaller fireproof lockboxes will be destroyed, or even if not, their contents will get hot enough to combust anyway. A bank safe deposit box offers a different security profile that’s probably more robust against fire because banks burn less…

Just went through this. Sample size one: While the fire resulted in the total loss of the house it was actually the water from the fire department not the heat that did proportionally more damage. As a mental model you shouldn’t think of it as “what if my house burns down?” so much as “what if nice strangers roll up to my windows and chainsaw through my roof and spray 50,000 gallons of water in here?” Yes everything…

We did that with major hail damage a few years ago. I learned that in a disaster, you should count on everything being junk, and you're lucky if you can salvage anything. We also learned the value of itemized lists.

1500/piece for 20 junk windows I was building a greenhouse with that I dug out of the trash the year before. $250 for a bird feeder because they couldn't find one outside of specialty stores. $40k instead of 10k for a new roof on the shed because it was heavier gauge metal than standard.

Exact replacements can be expensive, but you need to make sure your insurance has 100% replacement instead of adjusted for age or like-kind replacements.

After that experience, we itemized EVERYTHING in the house with make, model, serial number, and color. It was a bitch to get set up, but took the value of our home contents from around 75k to over 250k for exact replacements.

Copies of these records along with our master password for our keepass database are in two bank deposit boxes about 45 minutes apart. For $50/year we can sleep easy.

Re: Show HN: If you lose your memory, how to regain access to your computer?

#120

Post by crazygringo »

TouchID is a good starting point... though it does confirm your password weekly.

Somewhat tongue-in-cheek, but if I lose my memory, how am I supposed to remember the 7 (or 5) friends who have my password...?

Somewhat less tongue-in-cheek, if you really wanted to be serious about your friends not being able to produce your password now for the lolz, then you'd actually want to ensure they were merely acquaintances who didn't know each other and couldn't find each other, e.g. not all Facebook friends. In which case the list of friends becomes essentially as important as the password, and then how do you remember where you've stored that list?

In reality, hopefully you can just entrust your master password with your closest family (spouse, parent, adult children), assuming they're not going to drain your bank account or read your private digital journal.

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