It should be «christophercalm/when-im-gone», not «christophercalm/if-im-gone». That's not an option.
Cheat sheet for if I'm gone
91–100 of 194 posts
Re: Cheat sheet for if I'm gone
#92This is scary because my PC is setup with awesomewm, and I highly doubt anyone in my family would even be able to open a browser :/
Re: Cheat sheet for if I'm gone
#93Re: Cheat sheet for if I'm gone
#94Also consider what happens if someone is incapacitated but not dead. Getting into email, bank, etc. is one thing, but what if you own property with someone who is suddenly and irreversibly brain damaged? I strongly recommend filing a lasting power of attorney in advance if your risk of this is non-negligible. My mother is living a nightmare due to it right now as she assumed being someone's spouse would let you take responsibility for an incapacitated spouse.. wrong!
My father had a stroke so debilitating that he lost language entirely, lives in a brain care unit 24/7, and has zero chance of regaining even the most basic idea of a life. But by not being biologically "dead" he retains a lot of legal protections that don't really suit his situation and my mother is unable to sell her home without the permission of the Court of Protection. We filed for said permission 14 months ago.. and, you can guess the rest. With a lasting power of attorney, she'd have been able to organise her life properly within weeks.
Re: Cheat sheet for if I'm gone
#95Earlier quoted context omitted.
You could probably use Shamir Secret Sharing so you'd need to have k out of n parts to recover the information. Downside is that this complicates what is supposed to be simple. edit: I see other commenters shared this idea too.
It'd increase security vis-à-vis burglars, but for it to work for this use case you'd need relatives who can recover Samir secrets.
If they don't care enough to find someone who can recover them then whatever is protected by the secrets is probably not that important to them.
Re: Cheat sheet for if I'm gone
#96Also consider what happens if someone is incapacitated but not dead. Getting into email, bank, etc. is one thing, but what if you own property with someone who is suddenly and irreversibly brain damaged? I strongly recommend filing a lasting power of attorney in advance if your risk of this is non-negligible. My mother is living a nightmare due to it right now as she assumed being someone's spouse would let you take…
Most valuable comment on here so far.
Fundamentally, the OP isn't faced with a tech problem. People need to start with greater awareness of power of attorney, wills, and probate.
In a probate situation, your loved ones don't have to know all your passwords and so on. They do need to know where your assets are so they can contact the right organisations to claim them. And you can make that process easier for them by avoiding having small accounts all over the place.
Re: Cheat sheet for if I'm gone
#97Multiple printed copies of password manager's master password? Is he serious?
Re: Cheat sheet for if I'm gone
#98A friend of a relative had their house burglarized over a weekend. The burglars took their time and took apart everything, cutting all pictures out of their frames, etc. If a written password existed, they would have found it. The "give it to an attorney" plan would also worry me, unless I knew exactly who/what/when/where/why/how access was controlled and GUARANTEED (after all, an attorney's system could break down a…
> The burglars took their time and took apart everything, cutting all pictures out of their frames, etc. If a written password existed, they would have found it.
That seems astonishingly thorough, as if it must have been targeted? The burglaries I've heard of locally just grab the most reachable items, especially car keys.
> GUARANTEED
The thing with giving it to an attorney is you would have an contract, and I would expect them to explain very clearly what liability they would have in the event of this kind of mistake. I would also expect them to be good at keeping paper secrets in boxes, that's a very traditional practice.
Re: Cheat sheet for if I'm gone
#99Keeping your money in the bank means the executor of your will can usually get it through a straightforward process.
Keeping your money in crypto means that, by default, it dies with you, unless you take special effort to ensure otherwise, and are willing to trust a solution you can't possibly debug because you'll be dead.
Re: Cheat sheet for if I'm gone
#100Multiple printed copies of password manager's master password? Is he serious?
What else do you propose when trying to solve for this scenario? If all your passwords are within your password manager and you're suddenly incapacitated or dead, at some point a family members will need access. You can push people to use password managers themselves but sometimes that's just not going to happen, in particular if you're in a position where your next of kin might be older or just generally less technical and willing to adopt that kind of thing day to day.
I'm not saying it's perfect, but you're dealing with people and sometimes you need to make things simple rather than perfect to get the job done.