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Bitwarden releases “emergency access” feature

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Re: Bitwarden releases “emergency access” feature

#121
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have one email account on your domain (example.com) and use that for everything important. Use a long random password for the account and don't 2FA it. Share that with your family. That's probably all they need to gain access and reset your other accounts. If you 2FA the email account, you risk locking you and them out permanently for many services. I've written some about this. If you care to read it: https://www.go…

I don't buy the "don't use 2FA" argument. My partner knows how to unlock my phone. She can read the eventual SMS (I know, it's insecure, but still the only 2FA method in many US bansk), she will receive the email with the eventual password reset on the phone, she can use my authenticator apps. She also knows about my Yubikeys and where they are stored. She also has access to my laptop, where backups for the above are…

Even with TOTP, it's trivial to set up the same key on more than one device at the same time.

Re: Bitwarden releases “emergency access” feature

#122
post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a good approach, but it requires having a partner in the first place...

Anyway does it needed unless partner or something exists?

One might object to having different subscriptions to big corps draining your estate if you want eg. a charity to have it.

Re: Bitwarden releases “emergency access” feature

#123
post #16

The pandemic has made me (re)evaluate how my family can get to my finances and online services. Such solutions can solve issues related to bank/trading account access and key documents but what about subscription services? All my subscription services from Netflix/Plex (less important) to VPN/Blackblaze (more important) are tied to my credit cards, which upon my untimely demise will be deactivated. My family will sur…

I've written down all account credentials and passwords into a text file that sits inside a Veracrypted volume on an external hard drive with multiple copies including off-site. My wife knows the encrypted volume password (as her personal files are also within), and the location of the text file.

Still need to write a licence permitting her to release all my IP into the public domain.

Re: Bitwarden releases “emergency access” feature

#124
Unless I'm reading this wrong, this lacks a lot of granularity. I'd like to be able to only give access to a subset of my vault, not all of it. I'm of the opinion that my accounts should just disappear with me, apart for some things related to real life like utilities and the likes. Come to think of it, my GitHub account could be worth preserving too but right now I can't think of much else being worth it.

Re: Bitwarden releases “emergency access” feature

#125

I'm really happy to see this come to BitWarden. I switched from LastPass to BitWarden and this Dead Man's switch was the only thing I found missing. I actually kept my LastPass active just to provide instructions on how to get into my BitWarden in case of an emergency. I'm still not clear if both the granter and grantee need to be premium/paid subscribers or not. Hopefully I can grant emergency access to someone with…

I (premium user) have just tried this with my girlfriend (free user).

I can add her as a emergency contact and she can accept that. But she cannot add me as an emergency contact since it is a premium-only feature.

Re: Bitwarden releases “emergency access” feature

#126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think an accusation like that warrants some elaboration. Please describe why you think this is selfish.

It makes the whole thing the problem of whoever survives. By not leaving documentation, you pass the work of picking up the pieces to someone else. I think "selfish" might be a little strong, but it's not an indefensible position to take.

This depends on what we're defining as documentation vs access. My interpretation of the start of the GP was more about passing over actual login/access information, which especially for assets and finances really shouldn't be handed over this way.

Documentation in the form of "I have a bank account at Bank X, and a will at Lawyer Y (or, I don't have a will, but there are established protocols to handle this)" (even if only verbally) is different than "here's my username and password to my trading account in case I snuff it".

Re: Bitwarden releases “emergency access” feature

#127
post #16

The pandemic has made me (re)evaluate how my family can get to my finances and online services. Such solutions can solve issues related to bank/trading account access and key documents but what about subscription services? All my subscription services from Netflix/Plex (less important) to VPN/Blackblaze (more important) are tied to my credit cards, which upon my untimely demise will be deactivated. My family will sur…

I conceived this a little while ago and got a friend who is a developer to write it.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.mistudios....

It's been a slow start but hoping it picks up and we can get it onto the Apple store.

My mother has the releaser email and the email itself goes to my partner.

Re: Bitwarden releases “emergency access” feature

#128
My dad set me up with the equivalent feature to this on Dashlane. But it involved downloading their desktop app, which has all the usual anti-user behaviour - automatically adding to startup list, minimising to taskbar on quit, self updating without request, etc. So I ended up uninstalling it.

I hope that I get an email notification, or I find out through other offline means, if the feature ever gets activated. I hate that something which could have a significant impact on my life, potentially at a difficult time, appears to require running crapware on my own computer.

Re: Bitwarden releases “emergency access” feature

#129
post #26

Bitwarden is just fantastic. It's open source, the interface is clean, works fine on all platforms for me and pretty much everything is free. If the devs browse here, thanks for making it.

I have been using Bitwarden for over a year now and there are still tons of UX bugs that annoy me. In Firefox extension: 1. There is no memory. If you close the window, to copy the password, you have to re-search for the account to find the username. 2. If you open up bitwarden before the page is loaded, it says it can't find the password box to fill in. This is probably an extension limitation, but still annoying. i…

> 1. There is no memory. If you close the window, to copy the password, you have to re-search for the account to find the username.

Recently summarized the issue plus previous reports in here: https://community.bitwarden.com/t/unsaved-changes-are-lost-w...

I'd used LastPass before and believe their solution is plan obvious, it just works. So that's what I suggested Bitwarden to do: opening up a new tab with all the extension UI for data entry, instead of depending on the volatile state of a pop-up window.

EDIT: I misread and thought the issue was with the data entry! but now I understand that parent meant manually copying username & password from the extension to a website. While I never do that (autofill seems to work fine for me), the same proposed solution still applies, I guess.

Re: Bitwarden releases “emergency access” feature

#130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everything should be documented. We have a binder with checklists that walk you through gaining access to everything the other partner might need in the event of death (email accounts, domain registrar, bank and brokerage accounts, auto/home/life insurance, ongoing recurring bills of all sorts). Bitwarden databases are exported to paper, 3 hole punched, and put in the binder on a schedule. Both partners get setup wit…

This is a good approach, but it requires having a partner in the first place...

I'm single and living alone, no family in the picture. I have a very small circle of friends I love and who I trust implicitly. With their permission I ask them if it's okay to share some important things with them, in case the worst happens. Spare keys, contacts, etc. etc.

Those friendships might outlive any romantic partnership I do have in future. So I don't think it has to be a partner specifically. Of course, there are still some things that you might not share as openly even with that trust in place, but that doesn't stop you from having a backup plan.

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