Other than passwords though, I also have stuff installed at home on a Synology NAS, a mail server, a VPS running some websites (my own, family, my wife's), Home Assistant, Family photos with backups etc etc. I wonder who would not only have the passwords, but the know-how to manage the whole thing, at least to transition it to more managed services...
Me too. I'm starting to self-host more and more services for both me and my family, and I wonder what would happen should I meet a bus in a front-facing way.
I explicitly make it so I cannot regain access to my computer in the event that my memory becomes faulty. I would be in an impaired state, and cannot function in way that would be conducive to either work or pleasure in terms of computer use. That is to say, the entire reason why I have password security at all is to keep out people who do not know the password. If someone does not know the password, they should not…
No family, eh?
Maybe but does not want to share the pics or tax return.
Low tech: I put my secret manager password in a physical journal that is locked in a fire proof, water proof vault and hidden somewhere only my partner and myself know where it is. I use a password manager. Everything else goes in the password manager.
Alternative - my partner and I (and also two other close contacts) have password managers that contain each of the other one's secret. This was less an effort to help with the memory loss scenario and more of an effort to deal with death and access to services (especially to cease subscriptions and the like). In a lower trust scenario you could probably use a lawyer as a broker of the secret (potentially even as part…
this is honestly a very pragmatic solution. the amount of life-long relationships i've seen vanish overnight has got me to reconsider my choices when it comes to single points of failure.
I like the idea of the lawyer, unlike normal people, they like sticking to their promises.
Alternative - my partner and I (and also two other close contacts) have password managers that contain each of the other one's secret. This was less an effort to help with the memory loss scenario and more of an effort to deal with death and access to services (especially to cease subscriptions and the like). In a lower trust scenario you could probably use a lawyer as a broker of the secret (potentially even as part…
Password managers like bitwarden also have emergency access features which can do this, with the caveat of trusting them to enforce the requirement of access only being granted after a notification to the account holder is not denied in some time period (but unlike the lawyer you're not trusting them with the secret directly)
I didn't know about bit warden doing this until today! I definitely have to look closer into it, been using 1password for more than a decade and I keep being disappointed. I'd definitely like off-sourcing this to someone instead of building it myself
This kind of thing, widely implemented, would be a game-changer for dealing with assets after someone's death! I maintain my family's IT infrastructure (Google Enterprise admin, webserver etc) and I've been tempted to write down 1/4 of my password manager root password and give it to each of my family members - but then we run into the problem where if any one of them loses their shard, it's unrecoverable. Some kind…
We care about this porblem and are actively working on it, like the OP we also settled on shamirs secret sharing with a time lock mechanism. However, there is still the issue of the service provider going offline or out of business which we don't have a solution for yet. We have started with a good password manager and will be adding digital inheritance/social recovery soon! [0] Take a look, thoughts and feedback wel…
services going offline is a big concern for me! that's why my solution is offline first, I like the idea of the encrypted backup living in my friend's email inbox and working entirely without internet. a true hard copy.
for the time lock mechanism, how do you go about it? I'm interested in exploring using drand time lock, but that also relies on the service continuing to run (which is admittedly very likely) https://github.com/drand/tlock
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…
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.
no way!!!! I searched for a long time for a solution like this, many could encrypt using shamir but none took an actual file with browser upload and easy UX. and like, 14 years ago? my hats down to you my friend. my zip bundles are 1-2 megabytes due to all the wasm, and you achieved this on so little. impressive job! I'd love to hear what you think about mine, one of the differences is that it creates a ZIP file cont…
I wonder how many thousands or millions of useful projects are so well hidden that they are effectively nonexistent.
you know, I've always thought that "If I know I have something... somewhere, but I don't know where that thing is is, I have effectively lost it"
I also had old Google backup codes fail a few years ago. Anybody who hasn't regenerated them in a year or two, I recommend you do so.
Well, this is disturbing news.
I have (had?) a Google account tied to my email (which is on a domain I own). Not sure if I ever gave them my phone number, initially. Tried to login a few years back, correct password, but they insisted on me entering my phone. Finally I did - and they can't let me in because my "provider is not supported" and they can't send an SMS with the code, so I'm locked out. Tried every few months since then, no go. Fortunately I didn't lose much (except some family photos), but it is annoying as hell. I wouldn't trust Google with anything important. And yes, I tried with an brand new number on a new phone, unrelated provider. No dice. According to reddit I'm far from alone in this. So if you rely on a Google account for anything... Well, good luck!
Low tech: I put my secret manager password in a physical journal that is locked in a fire proof, water proof vault and hidden somewhere only my partner and myself know where it is. I use a password manager. Everything else goes in the password manager.
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…
In December 2025, items worth an estimated €30 million were stolen from a Sparkasse bank in the Gelsenkirchen suburb of Buer, Germany. The thieves used a large drill to break into the bank's underground vault and proceeded to crack over 3,000 safe deposit boxes.
I like that more people are thinking solving some of the problems of digital inheritance we face. These are problems that are so important now that so much of our lives are digital and tapping into ones actual social circle seems the best way to do this.
Also, kudos for packaging it as a static web app. That's the one platform I'm willing to bet will still function in 10 years.