Who inherits my passwords?

[handslive]

This is a problem I've been thinking about a lot.  I have a significant list of passwords, PINs, passphrases, and bits of profile information for the sites and applications they get used on.  My partner (or at least my estate) should have access to the most up to date version of this information.  It gets changed regularly and this means a safe

Comments

[hobbitbabe]

I am glad that people like you are considering this stuff, because I don't know how to assess it well enough to be comfortable with it at all.

My mother did not have what I consider normal boundaries for a 21st century person. She once wanted to send me to the bank with her PIN, for example. And the night before we expected my father to die, she went to the bank and took all the money out of his (non-joint) account, because she knew his PIN too. We knew all her relevant passwords and answered her emails while she was ill. All of this was convenient at the time, but there is no way that I would do anything like that, without some better protection for me and for my digital executors.

[puppytown]

Gosh, I could have sworn I'd heard of a similar service, but all I can find is http://keepass.info/.

Anyway, yes. Yes yes yes. Sooooo need this.

[handslive]

Well, KeePass is one of the tools I've used for storing passwords, but it doesn't have two of the key features my above idea has. First, there's no good way to insist that two or three people need to get together to recover access short of just splitting the passphrase up. Second, such a splitting scheme doesn't recover easily from the loss of some of the participants, like car crashes or house fires.

[puppytown]

Agreed! The thingy I'd heard of had some kind of interesting delegate options. I dunno where I read about it, now. Need to review my starred items in Google Reader, maybe.

[handslive]

I'd be interested to read more about it if you find the link.

[buhrger]

the notion of appointing a "digital executor" occurred to me a while ago. if one's willing to entrust the entirety of one's physical estate to the oversight of a single individual (the ordinary executor), entrusting one's data to such a person (although not necessarily the same person) doesn't seem to me much of a greater risk.

but it's something i think about. i'd say more, but gotta run very soon. neat post!

[handslive]

It's one thing to hand over control as one might with a power of attorney or as one must with an executor, but the assumption that's built in is that I am no longer directly involved in the management, use, or development of my resources.

This is quite a different level of trust if I am actively involved and have handed over equivalent control to another person. I see those as vastly different trusts.

[buhrger]

ah. yes, it is.