Cheat sheet for if I'm gone • Hacker News Board

Re: Cheat sheet for if I'm gone

#121

Post by ericpauley » Wed, Jun 15, 2022, 12:16 PM UTC

korfuri wrote: post #104

sema4hacker wrote: post #21

A 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…

Just give the attorney a sealed printed list of 10,000 numbered passwords. Someone with the passwords won't know what they are for. Even if they can guess that one of them is for your email account and they know your email account, they'll have to try thousands of passwords before they find the right one. In your house, and maybe with trusted friends, keep the instructions sheet with logins and a reference to the rel…

You could also use a simple one-time-pad here to split the password. Generate two alphabetic passwords, one for your attorney and one for a trusted friend. Actual password is these mixed with alphabetic rotation character-by-character (anyone ought to be able to figure out how to do this given a short guide).

Simple, and provably useless to an adversary unless they have both passwords (aside from knowing password length/format with one).

Re: Cheat sheet for if I'm gone

#122

Post by hnhn » Wed, Jun 15, 2022, 12:21 PM UTC

giancarlostoro wrote: post #119

petercooper wrote: post #94

Also 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…

Not sure if anyone on HN knows: do wills work for medical emergencies too? Because I would assume you could setup an emergency power of attorney for such a scenario. It is ridiculous that you cannot sell your home if your spouse is incapable of consenting.

I can only speak for the UK, but here, there are two types of power of attorney: the health one designates someone to make decisions about medical treatment if the subject is unable to; the finance one allows the attorney to manage the assets of the subject when needed.

The key point is that the whole process should be far easier if these things are setup in advance, while the person is still able to make their wishes clear, i.e. while they can still say who they trust to make decisions for them.

Re: Cheat sheet for if I'm gone

#123

Post by wohfab » Wed, Jun 15, 2022, 12:23 PM UTC

fareesh wrote: post #83

Whenever I think of this problem I figure it would be best to have a key that you split into N parts and give it to N people you trust. That way if you're gone they come together and unlock it. More secure because if any of them is individually compromised, your information is still safe.

That also means higher risk of failure, doesn't it? If just one of the N people isn't able to attend for whatever reason, your stuff is gone for good. If I give the key to my spouse, they can just use it. If I give it to 5 people, chance, one of those is unreachable when I'm gone, is 5 times as high.

Re: Cheat sheet for if I'm gone

#124

Post by hellofelicia » Wed, Jun 15, 2022, 12:26 PM UTC

theshrike79 wrote: post #107

petercooper wrote: post #94

Also 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…

This is something you should bring up with your bank. In Finland if you have a joint account with your spouse there is a difference if the account is listed as "X and Y" vs "X or Y". In the first case the account is inaccessible for a fair bit of time if either X or Y dies. In the latter case both can always access it. My partner's aunt got hit by this when her husband was 100% incapacitated and hospitalized. She cou…

I’m in Finland as well and have never heard of it! Would you mind sharing the Finnish names for these types of accounts?

Re: Cheat sheet for if I'm gone

#125

Post by memling » Wed, Jun 15, 2022, 12:27 PM UTC

vietvu wrote: post #70

I have planned something like this when I was mentally down years ago. Basically a dead man switch, where it would send an email to my family if I did not extend it every 3 months. Yeah, I might forget, but I am a neat and good with memory and it didn't happen trigger. I turned it off after about a year, after I got better and finally see it as meaningless. Even now, I always think: After all, nothing would matter if…

> After all, nothing would matter if I am gone.

To you, perhaps; but I would guess most everyone else would disagree.

> Why bother with all of that?

It's not for you.

Consider that relationships among your heirs and assigns are not always good, and death and money have a way of making things worse.

Re: Cheat sheet for if I'm gone

#126

Post by protonbob » Wed, Jun 15, 2022, 12:31 PM UTC

hnhn wrote: post #96

petercooper wrote: post #94

Also 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 a…

I agree that this isn't a tech problem. The only part that the tech is for is for having feedback on the document. It is meant to be printed out and not stored online. There is a spot on the document for a power of attorney in fact.

Re: Cheat sheet for if I'm gone

#127

Post by protonbob » Wed, Jun 15, 2022, 12:33 PM UTC

pjc50 wrote: post #99

Keeping 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.

I certainly don't keep my money in crypto. But I do have a certain amount of my investment portfolio in it. I treat it as a physical asset that has to be stored properly. Giving instructions for how to access the seed and how to use it seems to be sufficient but I don't have a large enough amount to probably matter all that much. Also, I have worked at banks and it is a pain to get access to bank accounts. Providing a death certificate can take a long time and I have a large amount of logins.

Re: Cheat sheet for if I'm gone

#128

Post by hnhn » Wed, Jun 15, 2022, 12:34 PM UTC

ellen364 wrote: post #117

I wonder about the legal position of recipients of these cheatsheet. In particular, how much trouble can they get into for using the passwords? Say probate is taking a long time, so someone logs into the bank account and withdraws money for everyday essentials. That’s probably one reason the deceased person left the cheatsheet. But what happens when a bank notices money being withdrawn from the bank account of a dead…

Yes, even if the recipient thinks they will eventually have the legal right of access, until they do it's not legal to try and move funds.

For a couple, this is one reason to think carefully about which assets are in joint names and which are separate. Ideally, they should have enough money in joint, liquid accounts to cover however long it may take to be granted probate.

Re: Cheat sheet for if I'm gone

#129

Post by saalweachter » Wed, Jun 15, 2022, 12:42 PM UTC

rob_c wrote: post #88

neato, would be interesting if someone would host a secure easy to access resource similar to this.

Eh, if I have a document somewhere that explains how to access all of my personal accounts and finances, it's a not-very-well-known target for a very targeted attack with limited payoff.

If I'm running a service that manages these documents for thousands, millions of people I know have a well known target appealing to a wide array of actors with nearly unlimited payoff.

Re: Cheat sheet for if I'm gone

#130

Post by theshrike79 » Wed, Jun 15, 2022, 12:51 PM UTC

hellofelicia wrote: post #124

theshrike79 wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is something you should bring up with your bank. In Finland if you have a joint account with your spouse there is a difference if the account is listed as "X and Y" vs "X or Y". In the first case the account is inaccessible for a fair bit of time if either X or Y dies. In the latter case both can always access it. My partner's aunt got hit by this when her husband was 100% incapacitated and hospitalized. She cou…

I’m in Finland as well and have never heard of it! Would you mind sharing the Finnish names for these types of accounts?

Basically an account can have either one owner and one person with a permission to access it OR it can be co-owned.

If you just have the access permission and the main owner is incapacitated or dead, your access is not valid anymore and it's a huge hassle to get access to the funds.

You want the co-owned style where both have equal rights to the funds on the account. The easiest way to check it is just to contact your bank and make sure it's set up that way the exact terminology seems to vary a bit between banks.