https://lifehacker.com/why-you-need-a-digital-dead-man-s-switch-1850870582
From alerting your family to trouble to ensuring folks have access to your accounts, there are several reasons to set one up.
OP dies and leaves wife and kids
After 10 days the dead man switch protocol activates
Wife receives an encrypted email. She knows what to do.
Using the emergency flash drive she deciphers the message. It's a link.
YouTube opens. Tears roll along with Rick. OP's never giving up.
What a completely unecessary way to complicate your life. Inheritance stuff and wills should be left to your lawyers, not some easily compromised online service. As for the online accounts, who gives a fuck about accsessing them after I kick the bucket? It's not like my grandchildren are going to wistfully read my lemmy shitposts.
Just use a password manager and set a switch up there
Then (if you have a well structured password safe) you also give whoever you choose to give it to information about your bank accounts or insurance numbers that relatives might not be aware of
Going through all the books to figure out what's relevant and what you have to care for is a huge pain.
I don't know if I'd want my lawyer to spend hours (that I'd have to pay for) in order to get access to accounts that might be relevant.
Who knows what's relevant in the end?
Sure if you're saving the logins for porn inside your manager, too, then it's going to be awkward but so is the old-school porn-box under the bed or the toys-drawer
I don't think lawyers are necessary for wills, and deadman switches have more uses than just last wishes.
Example: I take care of animals but live alone. If I die or become incapacitated, it would be nice to have an automated alert so my animals don't die as well.
Yeeeeeah….
I get the idea, but I’ll never trust the security of the services. Maybe to just say goodbye and stuff? But never to hand over account access, and never to include passwords.
It's called a sheet of paper with important information on it.
No need for anything fancy or some weird online thing, just stuff written down.
My strategy too. I have a piece of paper with my bitwarden credentials (password and OTP code) and a list of important items like bank accounts, utilities on autopay, etc.
I review it with my spouse every year and update anything out of date.
My dead man's switch will do the opposite of what many people want and just flood everyone I know with my browser history and porn collection.
Putting that kind of switch on a password safe seems to be the best option by far.
Not having to worry about single accounts and on top also having the ability to save insurance numbers, bank accounts etc. - if tagged/organised correctly a password-safe would've helped to much by not having to dig through binders of papers to see which insurances where running and which not for example and if you missed an account or some portfolio
Been thinking about building something for this. It's especially useful for cryptocurrencies since there's no legal means through regular estate law to turn them over. Just some encryption keys. The current solutions are meh and require other crypto natives to operate.
I kind of like the idea of encrypting your important afterlife bits on a thumb drive (with gpg or whatever). Give half the encryption key to two different people in your life that you trust. If they both have the thumb drive and their keys they can decrypt it and do what they want. Just tell them what they'd be looking for, give the drive to an estate lawyer or other trusted third party, or a bank's safe deposit box.
Could be pretty effective, and you don't have to worry bout some rando company being breached or doing something shitty with your data.
See I'd want something similar but for my various online accounts and infrastructure. For example, my family knows Jack about my AWS instances. They'd have to hire someone to make sure that they got shut down.
So a script to set up various items so that upon my death AWS will stop billing would be amazing.
That and to delete my porn, format my drives, and delete my internet history. Actually, just a script to slag the drives would be the best.
Billing wise, as soon as the CC company is notified of your passing, the card is canceled and typically the debt is forgiven as long as you are the sole card signatory.
Stopping AWS instances would be handy, but your idea to slag the drives is unnecessary.
Just set up full disk encryption for everything.
You die -> no key -> no data