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What Happens To Your Data When You Die?
dacarr writes "Your data - that is, the personal web pages and projects you have worked on to make the 'net a better place - are presumably password protected. But sooner or later the time will come when you take that last breath, and with you goes your passwords, but not your data. It's still there for your benefactors to deal with. And while many famous people who are no longer with us (e.g., Douglas Adams or Chuck Jones) have a staff for this, well, many of us don't. As such, have you planned for the hereafter, and if so, how?"
When I was in college a friend from the rugby team killed himself. I noticed days later that his student computer account was still open and emails had been received after his death. It gave a strange feeling to "finger" his account (which was how we found out about people in the old pre-web days) and have it return status information about him almost as if he was alive. I guess I can't really describe how it felt, almost like in some way some part of his life was still going on even though he was no longer around. I wrote to the system administrators and asked them to close his account down, which they did.
Not that it's relevent to the question at hand, but I never could understand what would cause someone to take their own life. Of course, logically I understand what causes it - complete and utter despair - but emotionally, I guess that I have never (thankfully) felt down enough to empathize with someone who commits suicide. It seems like such a waste. The summer before this he and I had decided to try to get into good shape for the upcoming rugby season, and we pushed each other at the gym and during runs and sprints. After he killed himself, I just had to wonder, what is the point of working so hard to get into good shape and then just ending your life?
Personal anectodes aside, I don't really see much point to this Ask Slashdot question (which is usually the case as Ask Slashdot is the lamest part of Slashdot by far). Your digital files will be treated the same way as your paper files after you die, and people have been dealing with the question of how to ensure that their personal effects are handled in the way that they would want to for thousands of years now. My advice to anyone reading this would I guess be to keep encrypted anything that you don't want anyone to see after you are gone, and for anything else, don't worry about it.
That said, I have a little fire safe that I keep important stuff in, like car titles, contracts and cd-rom backups of my computer files. Some of it is sentimental stuff like letters and writing. I imagine if someone decides it is worth publishing, it may live on significantly past my life time. Perhaps none of it will, but I'm not too worried about that, I'm happy that my "important data" lives on in the only place that matters, in the memories of my family and friends.
Basically, usefull and/or popular information has an indefinite life span because people will preserve, expand and share it. Call it the natural selection of information. We don't really need to do anything different to keep that going. Frankly, it's a good thing that useless and unimportant data dies, I'd hate to think that a future historian would be forced to search through petabytes of things like 100 year old Slashdot first-posts in order to find information about our recent war with Iraq.
The meek shall inherit the earth, in 3 by 6 plots. - Lazerus Long
...why do I care? I'll be dead.
In Soviet Russia, Chuck Norris will still kick your ass.
It goes to the spirit in the sky, of course.
...still has all his journals and so on online. Perhaps much to the consternation of the people who despise him.
Finding God in a Dog
Fuck you, you whiny douchebags! .. remember, this doesnt apply 'till I'm dead.
Aw, shucks.. You can have it now.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Ximian's Ettore Perazzoli died last year but his site and blog are still up:
http://perazzoli.org/blog.php
I just use my first name and digit 1 for all the accounts I have that require passwords.
Sooner or later they will discover a vulnerability.
...mine goes to the Recycle Bin.
There's software out there to do any task you like if not deactivated in a certain time period. I think it's on arsware.org, or google.
I can't speak for Douglas Adams but Chuck Jones' entire enterprise is handled by his lovely daughter Linda who literally busts her butt to run everything. That's hardly a "staff". Chuck would have been content to never have drawn another cel or market anything but thank heavens Linda suggested it.
/.ers reading this should be concerned
with one thing: finding a porn erase buddy and give them a housekey and all of your passwords.
The idea is that if you die unexpectedly your porn erase buddy will go into your machine, clear your machine of all the pornographic files. In addition you can also have him/her to clear out your conventional
meatspace porn so your Momma will still highly of you even after you're gone.
Timothy Leary is another good example of dedicated fans who keep the site running after he died and an even better example is Peter McWilliams who put the entire text of all of his books online before he passed on. I recommend Ain't Nobody's Business if You Do. The Absurdity of Consensual Crimes in a Free Country.
Frankly as far as data and death are concerned most of you
This is exactly why you make a will. Passwords...how ever you store them...should be left to the people you wish to have said information. It's that simple
Your data should be treated like what your mom said about underwear. She always said you better have a clean set just in case you get hit by a bus and have to go to the hospital; you better have a clean pair. Just like underwear being clean, you better not have anything you don't want her to see - at least encrypt the good stuff or even use those crazy alternate data streams but don't leave it for everyone to find (especially anyone from RIA because you know they dig you up to get you into court).
I'm probably rehashing, but in my bank saftey deposit box I have a notebook with all of my passwords and what do to with all of my electronic stuff, like who to notify and what to do with my data as well as the stuff in my safe.
Bill Gates took my pants, and I thank him for it.
I have a copy of the current server layout, (well, almost current) and ALL of the pertinent passwords WRITTEN DOWN, and kept in a safe. (Right next to the backup drives) My friend who covers for me when I'm on vacation is well known to my co-workers, and boss.
So... if I kick the bucket, there will be a way for everyone else to pick up the pieces, continute business and move on with life.
Now at home, it's a sticky wicket... I currently don't have anything up on our web site, so that's not a big deal. My wife gets to decide what to do... and I need to talk with her about this issue.
For me, the big question then is what becomes of my 80,000+ photos? I've got some good ones, that I even managed to sell. I'd hate for them to just get pitched. (Thus returning to the main question)
Odds are, if she wanted to, she could back all of my stuff onto a new spiffy $200 drive (200Gb now, and twice as much 15 months from now). I'm probably about to do something like this to save my late father-in-law's data.
Gruesome topic, but it's good to plan ahead.
--Mike--
I'm Immortal, so far
When I die, all my online timebombs go off... By which I refer to the "I'm a crank!" mass email floods which will expose the many crimes of several prominent politicians to the press... These, of course, are merely forestalled on a weekly basis by me resetting the countdowns.
Even though all the info's false, I still like to have my personal assassination prevention setup established just in case I actually learn something that is important some day. Shouldn't you?
It's your beneficiaries, not your benefactors, who'll have to deal with it after you're gone.
Better still, call them your heirs or inheritors. I know my files will be more burden than benefit.
MyLastEmail offers a service somewhat similar to this.
I don't know about you, but I plan on taking my data with me.
.sig
Here's what you do. First get a cellphone, a must these days. Next, make sure your pc is always connected to the net. Next write a piece of software. This piece of software will erase absolutely all of your data completely and irreperably. Or at least anything you don't want getting out. You can also write it to send data to certain people/places. In fact, you can write it to do anything you want with your data. Just set up a thing where you contact your computer directly or via cellphone to prevent it from doing its stuff. In the event of your death your data goes to where it should. You could even have it IM/E-mail friends about your death and put up a website about your life and such.
/. on saturday!!!!
Heck, if you are really good you can write the program to simulate your daily digital life. In effect making it so people who only know you on the net think you are alive. He died on thursday? I IMed him on friday and he posted to
Oh, just so you know, I'm actually dead and this is a program I wrote that is posting to slashdot. ph33r!!!!
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
I've left standing orders for any data left on my computer to be destroyed upon my death.
Multiple paper copies of important legal and financial information are stored in secure locations.
I have a script that if I don't use my computer for longer than 5 hours it assumes I have died and sends / to /dev/null.
You know, in a odd way personal webpages might serve as a legacy of sorts. Though the viewer for the most part might not know you're dead, your projects, photos, thoughts, and "stuff" (basically your life) is still up and being viewed.
I don't know about anyone else, but I don't really want to be forgotten.
(And I know this is probably a silly way to be remembered, but its just a thought)
Oh my, I think Dave just turned into a bear.
When my wife was killed in a traffic accident in 1998 I had the unhappy task of cleaning up her computer. I still have her docs (she was a teacher) and her website and whatnot. I don't know about other people's data; but for me the thing that hit home was her website which was one of those late '90's "This is the stuff I think is cool" kind of sites that basically was full of pictures and thoughts about her favorite shows and entertainers. It is almost like she wrote it to be remembered by. As for myself, I guess I had never considered the idea; I really don't think that anything I have would be on interest to anyone.
Humor from a Genetically Molested Mind
make sure there's at least one set of master passwords available in a safe deposit box somewhere.
Instead, I keep all my data on systems that are possible to break into with a boot floppy and some imagination, and assume that my friends will help my family get the critical stuff if something happens to me.
It doesn't change much - they'd still need my friends' help to figure out where the data are, so overriding the lost passwords doesn't add that much to their problems.... and the data that I lock away under PGP-style security with NO backup key is the data that I don't want ANYONE to see (or stuff I don't care enough about to worry about whether it's recovered or not).
So much for an adequate level of security.
I eat a vial with all my passwords. In my will I state that the Medical Examiner has to remove it from my gut. Every few days I pass it, wash it and swallow it again. :)
That is EXACTLY what I am reminded of when I read this article. Perhaps that is what I would do. It'd be fun, and I'd get the last laugh if my relatives are too stupid to figure it all out. Plus, I love puzzles, so it would be a perfect way to have someone guess my password.
For those that don't know what I'm talking about, Da Vinci Code is a book by Dan Brown that has been in the news quite a bit since it hit the market a couple of year ago because of it's questioning the Christian religion. The book is a murder mystery (thriller?) and the way to solve it is to follow a fairly cryptic path of riddles and clues. The guy that dies (this is the first thing you read in the book) is the curator for the Louvre (sp) and he died in a very weird way (which is where the clues start pouring in)
"Time is long and life is short, so begin to live while you still can." -EV
As such, have you planned for the hereafter, and if so, how?"
/., Livejournal, and webpage that I have passed away, and do with the myriad bits of data as she sees fit.
/.er who isn't married is, actually, in a very simliar situation. Create a way that your executor--whomever has to handle your affairs when you're dead, either your eldest adult child or your parents as a default--can get in and correct everything upon your death.
Every password I have for a meaningful username (i.e., no GalaxisOnline) is known by someone else--either my employer or my wife.
If I were to die tomorrow, my wife--as executor of my estate--would be able to post on my
Any
If you have enough meaningful wealth that you need real estate planing, just mention it to your lawyer when you write up a will. You might even want to pay him to be the executor of your estate, and entrust him with a "user is dead" password to retrieve data and take care of the regular "I'm dead" messages.
When you get busted, we split your warez.
- RustyTaco
I don't have a life already and I'm doing just fine.
Since very few (eg: 2) here have the main access passwords to the systems (root, administrator, dba, etc...) I have printed up a copy of the password card and have it in a sealed envelope stored in a safe. My boss, the company's CFO has the combination to the safe to get at it should either of us get whacked.
I don't delude myself into thinking that someone cares about getting into my personal data, but I have another envelope in a safe at home, and the combination is left with my lawyer with instructions to give it to my beneficiary.
-buf
A bit off topic - but close enough... there used to be a website somewhere out there where you could pay a fee up front and have your "last words" sent to your loved ones after you were gone. I've tried briefly to google for it - but no luck. Anyone?
Wherever you go, there you are.
When you die, your passwords die with you. (Unless you have them written on a note stuck to the bottom of your keyboard ;) ) But if you get Alzheimer's, they also go...
Honey, I shrunk the Cygwin
You just make an electronic machine to store all your passwords. You write a program that runs on the machine, and every day you are required to type a secret password into it. If for some reason you don't type in the password one day, the machine assumes you've died and it emails your passwords to relatives whom you've previously organized in its databank. Simple as that!
--
Are you a Chipotle Fan?
I've had to do this for a friend of mine that died a few years ago. We kept in contact, and sometimes I would help him out with server issues, so luckily I had the root password to his server. After his passing, I took over the job of transfering his domains to my control, informing email contacts of his passing as emails came in, and took over maintenance of the server to keep his memory alive.
If you have family and friends that care, the data will stay alive. If you don't, then it will probably fade away and be forgotten.
13 comments and still no citation of Linus Torvald !!!
For those who don't know it yet and want to find by themselves, please look at the linux kernel mailing list, on the 20/07/1996.
For those who want to do some karma whoring, please reply
#include "coucou.h"
Don't worry, the Great Modem in the Sky will see to it that your data gets safe passage across the River Styx, so don't worry about your data.
Wh47 d1d j00 541, 31337 15n't t3h r0xor5 ne m0r3???
While Key Escrow was a nasty idea in the Clipper Chip debate, with Escrow by the government, it's a good idea if you want some or all of your data to be available to your heirs after you die.
One could use conventional (overseas) escrow agencies to take keys or key fragments with instructions to hand them over to your heirs or executor upon proof of your death.
Another would be the idea I recently blogged which I call Friendscrow.
In this system, your key is distributed among your closest contacts, possibly without them even knowing it's happening. But when you die, you presume your heirs will be able to figure out who your contacts were and reassemble your key.
Of course you thus might want to have at least 2 keys. One for stuff you want your heirs to see, and one for stuff you definitely don't want them to see!
Has it been over a year since you last donated to the Electronic Frontier Foundation
As stated earlier, I think that the "natural selection of data" is a good thing. I keep a multimedia journal of significant events in my families life on my computer. Every 4 gigs I burn two copies to DVD, one in the bank and one at home. That's it, and only for my kids really. Anything else I doubt anyone would be interested in.
whois gawk date unzip strip find touch finger mount join nice man top fsck grep eject more yes exit umount sleep dump
I certainly won't forget that in a hurry. Although I intend to try. Perhaps alcohol and electroshock?
I have a "deadman's switch" on my computer....if i don't log in and reset it every so often, it emails all of my friends that would not otherwise find out (net friends who i've never met irl or don't see often) after the emails are sent, all of my drives are formatted and unmounted nah, i'm just kidding...i've thought about doing this before, but i'm sure i would forget one day and everyone would think i died and all of my stuff would get wiped
The sum total of my wisdom has been posted on Slashdot as "Anonymous Coward".
I am glad to have been able to share my knowledge of petrification, hot grits, and celebrities with the world.
That's "Mr. Soulless Automaton" to you, Bub.
Become very, very, very rich.
Adopt a favored staff member.
Post-mortem involuntary brain transplants (IANAL, but this could be deemed illegal in your jurisdiction. One of the places where that fabulous wealth will help to smooth things over.)
Use your new body as the plaything that it is.
Repeat after it is worn and haggard.
use the password, "password", for everything. Just kidding. Non-encrypted CD backups locked in the filing cabinet. Nothing kept on-line for more than one month without being burned to CD. Boss knows where they are, and (worst case) physical locks can be broken. Not a perfect system, but a good balance and solves much of the "hit-by-a-bus" problem.
BTW, I code, not administer. It would be a different set of problems for those who do.
- Jim
#include "humorous_pop_culture_reference.h"
DOnt click it. Its the goatse man
Set up a script that if I don't post on slashdot for a month, my account will automatically karma-bomb, much like this post will. Ah auto-trolling
One can put all sorts of things into a Will for the executor to deal with.
Everyone over 18 should have one, not only does it protect what you own, you can reach out and exact revenge upon people after your death with a Will.
Someone always mean to you? Will them a Nickel as a fuck you. Someone who betrayed me is getting a "bright shiny quarter" from me because "that's all they are worth." Have a friend with questionable musical tastes? Will them some CDs. I've got a buddy who is getting my classic rock collection so he "listens to something else".
Have a beer, and dictate your will to someone, sign it and be protected. In many states if you kick without one, the State gets all your stuff.
My data knows exactly what to do when I die. Oh my yes. Ever vigelant it stands waiting for word that I am no longer living. When that day come you will know. You will all know. MWHAHAHAHA!!!
Only in a Slashdot fantasy can a Slackware install turn into several hours of sex . . . . .
For those who might answer, "well, my pr0n collection would be embarassing," I gotta ask: how so? You'll be well past the point of caring.
The stuff that I bother to encrypt, and the data that I do worry about is that which could obstensibly get me in trouble while I'm alive. Once I die, I couldn't care less who looks through what.
My passwords are all stored in Keyring for Palm OS in my Treo (with the database backed up to a PC), and the master password is written down in a "useful information" appendix to the original copy of my will, along with my bank account details. My original will lives in the walk-in safe in my parents house, and both my executors know it's there.
;-)
The will contains a person nominated to take ownership of my machines and conclude my online affairs, including notifying interested parties and posting a message on my website.
So don't worry guys, if the hit succeeds, you'll find out fairly quick
Gerv
The people around you, you insensitive clod?
I am counting on my survivors to mirror my data. That has been my plan all along... that is why I take pictures, write, compose... Realizing that most of us won't make two specks of difference on this Earth it seems fitting to try and live like we can, and DOCUMENT everything... my legacy, however small will live on the net for eternity... hopefully.
I've actually given this a great deal of thought, and although I'm still rather young, I do have a contingency plan in place.
Every 6 months, I have a web site I must login to, or a mass e-mail is sent out. I have instructions for different family and friends to carry out, in the event of my untimely demise. These include open-sourcing some software I sell, how to access my online bank accounts, setting DNS on my domains to point to a page informing the visitors to my sites what happened, and informing my online acquantances about my death.
(Yes, the system will page me and email me after 3 months, as a reminder. I definatly don't want those messages going out before I die).
Thanks, but I don't care for naked guys abusing their anuses. Please mod this troll down.
Where do bad files go when they die? /dev/null/ to wait,
They don't go to heaven where the angels fly.
They go to a folder of
Won't see em again 'till 2038.
Etiquette is etiquette. He kills his mother but he can't wear grey trousers.
I searched for it--it really hasn't been posted yet!
-I am an elective eunuch.
Wait, does anyone have Heaven's IP?
On another note, I found it ironic that the rotating quote at the bottom was "Sh*t happens".
cue jokes about people being buried with their computers
-Rob
Marriage doesn't have to suck!
Yes, he doesn't know that Michael Savu reads slashdot.
You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it dissolve.
Isnt this one of the major reasons why you should plan on signing over you copyright to FSF so they can make sure that its available and that the protections are ensured even after death. Another option would be to setup a family trust and put the code as IP in the trust, this allows for all you anti-GPL swine to retain your rights. Of course if your family trust votes to GPL your work about all you can do is roll over and fart dust.
Okay, maybe expecting the Internet Archive to take care of my online presence for me in the event of my demise is a bit much, but it's not like I'll be wanting to change my site after my death.
And if it so happens that I change my mind and do want to change it after I'm dead, let's see if their fancy-schmancy network security can stop a ghost.
here is a thread from alt.ascii-art mentioning the passing of a regular. the following weeks were filled with everyone posting their archives of art that he had done, and now it's archived by google and he will live on forever!
For those with a cryonics contract, the cryonics provider is more than happy to take delivery of a hard disk or 2 along with your cooling corpse. It will help quite a lot in reconstruction of your synaptic pathways if a lot of side data is available to cross-correlate and verify information extracted from destructive nanoscanning of the vitrified brain. In other words... GUARD YOUR DATA. Unless you want to be dead, buried, and forgotten, like billions of people before you. How boring. I myself carry a digital camera and voice recorder 24/7, and am accumulating about 40 Gbytes/year of personal data. I don't plan on forgetting who I was, or used to be. Encryption, of course, is required to keep my identity from being distributed widely, so a balance has to be made between security and safety. I had a rather nasty accident with an AES256 key earlier this year and lost 2 months of my life, along with some neat photo's and recordings. Oh well, live and learn.
That is the REALLY important data--like how it felt to get your first kiss, to drive your first car, to re-read your favorite book, etc etc.
What about maintaining THAT data after you die?
It may be feasible! Check out cryonics, the experimental science of cryopreservation, where as soon as possible after legal death, your brain is perfused with a cryopreservative (to minimize ice crystal formation), and then placed in liquid nitrogen, where all chemical reactions essentially cease.
Hundreds or even thousands of years from now, sophisticated neuroarchaeological techniques may be used to restore that data. And when that data is restored, you will be alive again. Nice work if you can get it, huh? And if revived in a society that is capable of such science, well, you are talking "virtual immortality", my friends.
see Alcor for details....
eat shiat and bark at the moon
Why aren't your passwords in your legally protected last will and testament? A trusted 3rd party can then divulge the passwords on your passing, along with all your other 'property'.
More importantly, how have you prepared for passing information on to your loved ones? I know in my will I have included a clause that all work to which I hold the copyright is immediately and irrevocably placed into the public domain upon my death absent a statement within the work itself to the contrary.
I mean, can you imagine your own family afraid to use a password to decrypt your files on the odd chance that someone else in the family might be a litigious bastard? "You're bypassing encryption to access my 20% of the copyrighted file there, buddy, that's a DMCA violation!"
Furthermore, what kind of provisions are in normal law for copyright on your passing? If you don't assign your "precious IP" to someone specifically in your will, does it pass into joint ownership among your heirs? Does it pass to the state? If it does, will that mean that it's a copyright violation for your children to make a copy of your journal, so they can't read about your life?
(Other ramifications of this... IIRC, all documents owned by the government are by default in the public domain... does that mean that if you die without naming an heir to your IP that the IP passes to the government and into the public domain? I AM curious).
In a world where IP is getting messier every day, I want to make sure my children can enjoy my writings, photos, and other things that modern copyright law might deny them. Not that anyone else will care about my journal or my pictures of their first birthday, but THEY will, and I want to make sure they don't have the ability to use "IP" reminders of those memories ripped from them by some @$$hat politician who thinks copyright extensions to infinity minus one are a good thing.
--AC
most people have all the info there stuck on the side of the screen
Reading this thread, particularly posts about the Dead Mans Switch software and others bring back memories for me.
My housemate, Cip, passed away a few months ago suddenly due to a rare blood condition. I had to clean all "unsuitable" materials from his laptop before his family could have it, but his personal emails and other things - well, they never really occured to me.
Perhaps the strangest thing is seeing old emails to/from him, forum posts by him, and the weirdest thing of all is still possessing "replays" of Strategy games we both played in - I can still see how he played.
Such an interesting topic...
has a copy of my will, living will, and final instructions. The first line of the final instructions is to take a belt sander to the platters of my hard-drive.
The quote of the day at the bottom of this Slashdot page I've just seen: "Shit happens."
No Christmas present for you!
I work at a domain name registrar, and if someone doesnt have the username and password and the registrant is deceased, we need a death certificate along with our normal info to get the log-in. It's not a foolproof system, but it's been a pretty rare occurrence. Most of the Internet crowd is pretty young.
-- http://uncannyvalley.org/
I have this script which will pretend to be me if I do not pass it a secret value once per month. It will cause all sorts of trouble, including emailing old friends revealing messages from the ether.
Actually, this leads to a more practical idea of creating an AI to make sure that your wishes be carried out. Your AI would be financed by a trust and would be legally protected by your last will and testament. The will would state that the AI should be maintained as long as technically possible, perhaps employing programmers to keep it running should no longer run on current systems.
Who knows that use one would put their post-mortem AI to. Perhaps I should leave my old friends alone and program my AI to randomly send money to wacky startups!
- JML
Look, asshole, nobody wants to see your stupid advertisements disguised as mirrors posted several times in the same article. Someone with mod points, I beg you to go through this guy's last 5 or so posts and mod them all Overrated.
remember those commercials?
Perhaps someone could rig one of those devices and get it running Linux. Then when you die, it connects to your website using XML-RPC, and posts your death announcement.
It could work.
OBVIOUSLY won't feel even the slightest bit of the /. effect.
douglasadams.com is already down.
wannabe mafiosos always click this link
I suppose a simple dead man switch is the easiest way to hide things... at least for files on your HDD. If you don't stop the program ever night, it nukes all of your private stuff.
Burned floppies, DVDs, whatever would be problems, though.
For anything else, get a safe deposit box, write all the passwords down and give a trusted friend the key/instructions. He can destroy or recover different data as necessary.
"Faith: Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel." - A.B.
Include a copyright, statement of ownership and a cease and desist clause in your will. Then, if any website continues to serve your content, some bored lawyer can sue them for unauthorized distribution a la MPAA/RIAA style.
+++ATHZ 99:5:80
The CIA keeps copies of everything, so my family can just ask them for my passwords when "the time" comes...
It's always amusing to find an old bookmarks file and then, just for fun, visiting old pages of friends that I used to visit so often that they earned a place on my bookmarks.
:-)
Now, something that's really weird, and has come to my mind sometimes, is setting cron jobs to send emails and post files after you're dead.
If you don't die, just erase the job and create a new one for another 6 months.
Can you picture the face of your friends when they find out that your blogger or webpage has a new photo of you, 3 months after you're dead? Let's say, hmmmm, from Cancun?
Utinam logica falsa tuam philosophiam totam suffodiant!
i have a username and password for my windows server that is only in my will which is sealed until my death, it is a logon for a terminal server. after loggin into the server it prompt the user with a series of questions, which could be answered by a close friend or relative, and a few passphrases which are also in the will.
if they answer all the questions correctly it sends an e-mail to their account with a list of all my usernames and passwords.
there are accounts for all my family members. all they have to do to update the list of passes is send an e-mail to a special account with the username and password on two seperate lines and it adds it to their database.
i wrote this program after my uncle died, he was a network admin at a local public college, and no one knew his passwords for his home network, needless to say he filed his taxes online and the family was left with a slight problem becuase no one else knew any of his passwords.
Don't suppose there's much call for a logical smart bomb that would reformat your hard disk if you hadn't logged in for a set time?
At least that way you can die happy knowing all your lesbian anal pr0n would be safely deleted upon your untimely demise...
I had a dream, bright and carefree, but now there's doubt and gravity
... is to surround myself with all my digital belongings in my tomb. I'd place it right next to the jars containing my preserved organs, so that my mummified body can enjoy Tribes 1 eternally into the afterlife.
I might also have a giant pyramid built above my tomb, just for kicks.
webpage
I suspect that more than a few slashdot readers have written software and selling it as shareware. I once wrote a Macintosh game called Munchies and I still get a handful of registrations each month. But it's it's a one man show. If I die, there's no one else to handle the registrations and development would cease. I'm wondering how other shareware developers have dealt with this situation. Does the death of a solo developer usually mean the death of his/her software?
...if I die and you need a password. If I'm not available, just leave a message at the sound of the heavenly choir, and I'll get back to you.
"My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right." --Senator Carl Schurz (1872)
Theoretically though, I wonder what the law says about this. The hard disk, being an object, would go to the next of kin, but does that include data too? Data is usually more expensive than harddisk, so that doesnt seem right..but then does that mean some govt official sits and deletes data of all deceased people's hard disks. that doesnt dound right either.
But I think a "geek" would realize that a fire safe might protect paper - which burns at a relatively high temp - but might not protect CDs which can melt and warp at a much lower temp. I doubt the fire safe would do much good if the house were to burn down completely, as the fire would probably last long enough to heat the inside of the safe to a very high temp.
Why do I get the feeling that you're pointing to a goatse mirror or equivalent?
"They redundantly repeated themselves over and over again incessantly without end ad infinitum" -- ibid.
Nice troll,
Asshole.
Actually, I want a hi-tech solar powered no-moving parts tombstone with an mp3 player reading my final diary out thru a small crystal speaker forever.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
a pretty big Pr0n collection I've amassed over the years. I wonder if the person that finds it would tell anybody or not tell anyone and keep it for themselves!
As a married man with wife and kids, my assets fall into the hands of my wife and she has access to them now, anyway. I expect that my highly prized computer collection will end up in a dumpster, My webspace is shared with my kids, the only thing that is locked up is my own computer and my email, they are of interest to only one person, me. When I die, they reformat the harddrive, my existance on this planet is only then represented by a brass plaque, and short memories, 'such is life'.
/. is connecting people with the real world, nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
What?
There was an unknown error in the submission.
Yeah, but this guy will make a mirror for microsoft.com and the New York Times. He seems to make mirrors regardless of slashdotting. Seems odd to me. Like, maybe there's another reason for doing it?
My precious pr0n is coming with me, biatch!
-Imidazole2
Oh, and Personally, we don't like you. HAND.
if you consider yourself a libertarian, this is perhaps the most important right--to determine the time of your own death.
No one that has ever killed themselves has told me he regreted it afterwards. It is common for failed or stopped suicides to exrpess regret at even trying. You have to try really hard to pretend only the first class were making a rational decision. Extreme (or poser) Libertarianism requires that people be allowed to make their own choices without exception, but the implication is that they will make rational decisions.
As an extreme (or poser) libertarian you would agree that someone in emotional distress shouldn't be allowed to kill another unwilling person, right? That still holds If the person to be killed is himself.
This is an opinion from a guy who reads Reason magazine, and I voted for Harry Brown. So that makes you a freak job (or a teenaged poser).
.sig Karma out the wazoo, better to spend points elsewhere if this is above 2 or below 0
The great musician, writer, comic and man -- of whom you have probably never heard if you don't live here in Slovakia -- died in 2000 after suffering a heart attack while sitting at his computer at home. The last people who have actually interacted with him a hour or so before his death were people on an online chat group he attended very often (he was very fond of internet).
But his web page is still up at www.jarofilip.sk, and the guestbook on his page was updated with new comments from people sad for his death for a long time after (the guestbook stopped working recently after a "server reorganization" as the page says). His messages to the chat group are still available on the internet. People feel that they are a very valuable insight into Jaro's mind.
Why am I telling you all this about a man you have never heard of? Because it shows that if your data is worth it, if you can make people care of you, your online data will probably survive just like the banal letters of famous people of the past, that are now worth millions on auctions.
well accepting Jesus for one...
other than that, the person who looks at my code will kill me again for neglecting to comment it
http://daisyman.arsware.org/dms/
Of course that's all he does. It's obvious that he's just looking for a bit of free advertising, but still, who cares?
He's providing a useful service to slashdot readers at the small cost of seeing a one line text ad, which you don't even have to see if you diable SIGs. It's more or less the same as google's adwords, which I also don't mind.
This is a problem I faced about a year ago while making my will. As others have mentioned the obvious answer was to put my passwords in with the will, but since I change them every 6 months that wasn't very practical. The best solution I've come up with is a three-fold approach.
1. My computer at work isn't a problem since it's accessable to more than one person.
2. The passwords to my home computers are kept written down seperately with instructions on how to find them in my will.
3. Everything else that is encrypted but would be of no use to anyone else will simply die with me.
For various reasons, I happen to know a lot about beads -- the jewelry type. And over the years, I've gotten to know many of the "big" names in what is a fascinating, if admittedly somewhat small, subculture.
Whether you were talking about 90,000 year old beads from Africa or ancient Sumarian seal beads, one of the great resources available to us bead collectors was Dr. Peter Francis, Jr. and his website -- The Beadsite.
Now Peter was a somewhat odd character, even in a world populated by odd characters, and people argue all the time about many of his theories -- some of which, I much admit, seem a bit unlikely. But many years ago he was kind to a young kid interested in beads, so he's always had a special place in my heart. And so over the years we've kept in sporadic touch mostly via his web site and the occasional conference where we'd run into each other.
Long story short - he unexpectedly passed away (on a bead collecting trip of course!), and no one quite knew what to do with his site. Still, it is full of detailed information about beads that is available nowhere else in the world. Rather than take it down and allow that information to be lost, his website remains up - as he left it - to serve as an online repository of bead information, as well as a place to solicit donations for causes that he cared about.
I can only imagine that for someone who devoted his life to study and research, this is as fitting a tribute as anything. I would hope that when my time comes, people think my electronic "voice" is worth preserving....
If I told you, I'd have to kill you. -Rick
I hereby bequeath all my posessions to crackers.
just try and get my passwords, bitches.
grey wolf
LET FORTRAN DIE!
My father passed away due to a sudden heart attack in 2002. He hadn't prepared for something like this at all - he was in his mid 50s and in great shape. Outside of his main Mac desktop, i have no idea where his stuff is. His work machine was wiped when he was laid off about 6 months earlier (he worked in IT). I have tried to access any accounts of his that i knew of - ebay and paypal were the only important ones, the BBS accounts didn't matter so much - to see if there was anything that needed to be taken care of. But i didn't have his password, and the hint was "same as password." I still haven't been able to access either of those accounts, I wouldn't be surprised if there was some money in the PayPal - he was really into ebay.
he might have had some information stored on his Palm, but the battery died and everything was lost before i even thought to check it. That still irks me.
It is weird whenever i stumble upon an archived forum post made by him. It's like he's still alive, but nowhere near me physically. That's a little piece of his mind, words said and recorded. The same goes for his email. When I was making sure to tie up loose ends, i was reading mails he had sent and recieved just a few days earlier, when he was in seemingly perfect health.
Data, especially communication, is much like a photograph. Only instead of archiving some physical thing or event, it's a snapshot of someone's brain or personality.
"Upon attaching the waterblock to my penis, I began to notice that I know nothing about computers." -- JRockway
I've had several online friends die over the course of the years (being online since 1979 has a way of doing that.)
In every single case, regardless of planning, I have recieved messages -- originally email, more recently IM -- from the survivors. If you use a work email account, for example, usually there's a broadcast email about being deceased, and then a custom bounce message saying the same.
In the case of IM it has been relatives. A lot of folks leave their systems set to "log me on automatically."
It's very strange getting IMs from a dead person's account, but helpful in that you can usually talk briefly with a family member and express you condolences.
More intereting is that the people I know who have died recently made use of yahoo/MSN's mobile messaging as well. They're still on my buddy list as "mobile" even a year later.
Apropo in a way.
Kinda related -- a neat program over at Arstechnica to send out those last few message group posts and emails from beyond the grave -- dead man's switch.
I've considered arranging an heir of sorts for the site and its data by arranging it with a lawyer as part of my will. I assumed that I would include passwords and any relevant instructions for the transition as part of my will. I never followed through with it as it seemed like somewhat awkard thing to arrange.
Anyone else have any experience or advice in this area?
Slashdot Required Reading
I'll be dead.
YHBT, YHL, HAND
From Coupling the series:
You have a "porn buddy" with whom you have swapped keys.
Upon your death, your buddy goes into your house and removes all porn and offending content before relatives can see it.
Why not do the same for your data, since most of it is probably porn?
Doesn't matter to me. All my passwords are on a yellow post-it note attached to my monitor.
My wife and I put together a living will once when we left our kids and traveled across the country so that our family would have something to understand our wishes if we were to die while traveling. I sealed (in an envelope) the will along with a printout of my usernames and passwords for almost everything that I keep in SplashID by Splashdata. (great little program for keeping passwords that syncs to my palm) That way, they had the ability to get into financial accounts and other things in the event of death. The envelope was to be opened only in the event of death or incapacitation...that way I knew that the guardians would be able to tie up loose ends for me and/or my wife in the event of our passing on... Greg
Yes, you read that right. I expect my friends to hack into my computer should I reach an untimely demise, and I would do the same for them.
Allow me to explain. I know a lot of people online, some of whom none of my RL friends/family are aware of. I expect my friends to be aware of this, and to break into my computer (I dunno, rewrite the root password hash or something) to get at my AIM buddy list and email address book to make sure everyone hears about what happened to me. I also expect them to do appropriate things with my various (mostly useless) data. There are a very tiny few things I wish to die with me, and those are encrypted.
I hope my friends realize I'd want them to do this for me, and I'd definitely do it for them. It's not like I'd go in there snooping and spying and stuff, I'd be very sensitive to their privacy... but some things need to be done.
It is entombed along with me in gold CD-Rs, along with my wife, secondary wives, concubines, treasure, and guards in a vast pyramid of my own design. They shall all accompany me to the afterlife.
This happened a friend a couple years ago. Everyone he knew cloned the site. I hope that happenes to me if I die.
http://www.gusmahon.org/
It's a big job and somebody has to do it! So I'll take on the task. Simply email me all your passwords and personal information such as credit card numbers and whatnot. I'll even get started early by familiarizing myself with your data so when die I'll know what's worth using err sharing with the world.
Pack up all my content and put it into one last post!
Facts vague to protect the innocent (and dead):
A small company with a large E-business element had a guy who was the chief IT guru, a greybeard who did pretty much everything. He died.
Well, they didn't outsource PKI, they ran a Root CA. The Root CA was created and promptly taken offline. To the guy's house. Actually, the whole server wasn't taken - just the hard drive. The house was a pigpen, and that's being nice. They didn't know if he had stuck the drive in a safety deposit box, nothing.
To make an ugly story short, they pulled all the certs they used, and re-issued new ones, updated the CRL list to all their business partners, asked them to delete the imported cert. PITA.
The irony was, they didn't need to be doing PKI. They just had a few SSL web servers. Shoulda just bought em.
This is a right far more important than even "information wants to be free", or even freedom from slavery.
-I am an elective eunuch.
To quote Gladiator: "...and ill have my revenge, in this life or another."
I have tendencies to believe in reincarnation. I also assume and hope that if this actual life is shitty, the one following will be its opposite.
So don't give up that early; when the revenge will come you will appreciate it even more.
I've actually set up a trust to deal with this. I've been slowly compiling CDs of my work and other information and building a web site. The idea is to dedicate a certain amount of my wealth to maintain a little site in cyberspace. Most people "live forver" through their children so I was doing this in case I end up not having any, and it's nice to know that if some pearl of wisdom you've learned can be shared and benefit others.
Ultimately, I guess when you die, who knows what happens. Relatives come crawling out of the woodwork like roaches and everything you work for could end up in a pedantic game of tug-of-war, but I'm hoping that won't happen.
When I originally spoke with a lawyer about doing this, the guy said it was pretty difficult to enforce detailed terms of things such as this after your death. You see in the movies about people who die and have spectacular conditions upon which gifts will be bequeathed. I'm under the impression some of this stuff isn't easily enforceable unless you really have someone managing things you trust.
is the title of an article by Penn Jillette (of Penn and Teller fame).
:-P
Whether or not you want your laptop cremated depends on your personal data, but planning ahead is definitely recommended.
--
One alternative would be to keep an encrypted file of passwords, and to distribute this file together with a set of keys using a secret sharing scheme. Could be configured so that, e.g., any two good friends plus any two close relatives can combine their keys to decrypt the file, which assuming they can be trusted, will only happen after some agreed condition like death.
But then I recalled last summer when my father had a heart attack and, due to a string of complications was going to have more than usual risky surgery. If all went well, then it would be considered a minor surgery, but if not... Sunday evening before the Monday morning surgery my family gathered with my alert yet sober dad and began to have "the talk." Eventually he began to tell us the financial arrangements he had made for our step mother and finally he told us his passwords and password methodology. Something about disclosing the initimate, closely held passwords made me realize he might really not make it.
After a few somber minutes my brother broke the silence and said that, strangely enough, he had developed a similar way of creating and remembering passwords as had my dad. I, wanting to try to keep things serious relunctantly gave out my methodology, too, which was coincidentally similar to both my dad and my brother's way. The laughter not only broke the tension, it strengthened our bond.
Everything turned out well; we are quite thankful.
I wonder if Dad changed his...never mind...
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
As an estate planning lawyer, I can tell you that this probably wouldn't work. First of all, the client gets a copy of his will, assuming the original will is kept in the attorney's safe. So the copy would have the passwords written on it and it wouldn't be safe.
Second, most states require that original wills be lodged with the court within a certain amount of time after your date of death. Your will would then be accessable to the public (for example, you can buy a certified copy of George Washington's will, if you want one).
Third if you're paranoid, telling the lawyer your passwords and have them kept for safekeeping by some other means would result in a situation where the lawyer's staff would probably have access to your passwords, even while you're still alive.
What I think we have here is a business opportunity. A company can maintain a completely off-line registry of passwords in envelopes that aren't even opened by the company that are turned over only after your executor delivers your death certificate to the company. I'm operating under the assumption that any on-line registry of passwords is simply insane and cannot be truly secure under any circumstances.
Of course, this company already exists: It's your bank. Just write down your passwords, put them in sealed envelopes, and put the envelopes in a bank safe deposit box. If the box is titled solely in your name, no one would have access to it except for your conservator (if you get put into a conservatorship), your agent under a power of attorney, or your executor/trustee after your death.
144l. ph34r my 133t l3g4l 5k1lz!
You are your brain.
Your brain is information.
The degree of information retrieval from a frozen brain is dependent upon the sophistication of the information retrieval technology. Same as retrieving information from a shattered hard drive. It can be done, but you need some good equipment.
Cryonics DOES preserve information, but is it enough for revival?
Well, how much information is preserved depends not so much on the cryopreserative technology used today, but instead on how sophisticated is the information retrieval technology of the future.
But "the future" when it comes to reviving a frozen cryo, is NOT set. If the information retrieval technology at year N is not sufficient to revive, then wait K years.
So, I hope you see that the odds are quite possibly good that there will exist some year N + m*K years from today in which the information retrieval technology is sufficiently sophisticated.
So, in retrospect, destroying information LONGTERM is actually difficult.
For more information on Information Theoretic Death, see Ralph Merkle here and here and here.
eat shiat and bark at the moon
Unfortunately he had his archive of negatives and prints stored in a vault in one of the World Trade Center basements. I think most of it ended up being dust on 9/11.... I vaguely recall a tv show about it and his daughter. They may have actually been able to recover some of it... not sure.
Anyway, there are things worth going to serious trouble to preserve, and some of them are digital these days. Personally I'd like to think that the website I do won't just disappear when I stop paying my webhosting account and the webhost deletes the account. ;-(
Ok, maybe nothing I'm doing is that long-term, but there are writings that *do* matter. Diane Rehm (NPR) was interviewing an author who was writing about the wives of the US's 'founding fathers' and talked about how hard it was to find letters, etc since so many were destroyed. Sad.
Also goes to show that the best laid plans (and backups) of mice and men can get wiped by unpredictable events like 9/11...
CD of Fire?
Now what was that song called...
Much better than the meat puppet version I think - like hendrix's version of All Along the Watchtower...
Q.
Insert Signature Here
Remember Joel Klecker? (espy) - the Debian developer?
http://www.espy.org/
IIRC, his parents are keeping his webserver & stuff online for as long as they can.
Just over a year ago, my friend gene_tailor was killed in a car accident while she and her husband were on their way home from an SCA event. I posted about this in my journal.
Problem: I wanted to tell everyone who knew gene_tailor that she died. I specifically wanted to direct this to her slashdot friends list.
Question: In Slashdot, as an online community, how should I go about notifying others who don't know me that a mutual friend has died? I tried posting responses in her friends journals, but got no response - I guess people thought it might be a hoax.
Just so everyone understands, gene_tailor were very close friends in real life. I introduced her to slashdot.
So the question remains. Surely I'm not the only one to experience this. What have others done? What should I have done?
"I'm The Bounty Bear. I will find him anywhere. I'm searching."
I used to work for a bank and they had an interesting solution to safe deposit boxes.
When you lookup a customer's accounts with the bank, you may find a couple checking accounts, a couple savings accounts, perhaps a money market and you may see a "deposit box". Now this account has no balance and was generally in the way of the tasks I was working on but it served its purpose.
When someone dies, the relatives always seem to figure out where they banked at. When the administrator of the estate gets a list of the assets, they see the deposit box "account" and know that there are untold goodies to be claimed.
If these deposit boxes were kept n file in some other way, they may go unclaimed until the branch closed or changed the vault.
Why is this on topic? Thats for you to decern
I only came here to do two things; kick some ass, and drink some beer...looks like we're almost out of beer.
It's ok - someone once came up with a "dead mans switch" that automatically deletes your pr0n collection if you don't reset it periodically. The name escapes me.
My porn collection will have to self-destruct. No way I am letting anyone see ...
-------
FM Clan
I know this is a bit extreme, but it gets around the fire safe issues with CD melting points mentioned elsewhere.
"Prepare for the worst - hope for the best."
I keep an email folder with all of my subscription information in it. However, seeing as how my computer takes 2 passwords to even log into, I think that info will remain safely locked into my useless hardware. I suppose a better idea would be a spreadsheet that I print out periodically and put in the safe with the rest of my goodies.
Often in Error, Never in Doubt.
Alcor has the better and newer cryopreservatives, which afford vitrification, and Alcor also uses a cryopreservation standby team, who are mainly made up of cryonicists, who have been trained and who fly to remote locations, whereas CI uses morticians for the most part. No standy team for CI....
eat shiat and bark at the moon
Yes, I've planned to spend the "hereafter" in my Father's house.
If "creating an AI" is more practical than another idea, time to ditch the other idea.
What would happen to my paypal account and the money on it if I die tomorrow?
Iraq: war to save the U
In my will, I actually provided for this. The provisions are that any and all hard drives have to be destroyed. All the rest of the equipment can go to the pockets of my family and friends, or to charity. I don't really care which.
It actually never occurred to me to provide for my websites. I suppose that I'll have to add a codisil that provides the passwords for them. I figure that if I'm famous enough at the time of my death that people care, they'll get taken care of. Otherwise, nobody will care anyway.
The funny thing is that I'm only 23 and I have a will. Like I always said: Rich or dead by thirty. Rich ain't lookin' too hot.
Damn. I thought that guy with Thinkgeek T shirt just bluffing.
"Prepare for the worst - hope for the best."
I run a fairly large automotive forum. I've owned/operated it for a better part of 2 years now. Not too long ago, a forum member was killed in a car accident. A number of other forum members knew him, which is how we found out. For all I know, any number of the 9000 some-odd registrations are connected to dead people. That being said, I didn't touch his account. All his posts remain and all the data will remain. When he died, there was very little discussion as to what to do. Everyone thought it would be best to keep his stuff online.
Maybe someday, just like some of the previous posters have said, someone will be interested in reading about his car exploits will do a search on him...
Does your comment mean he now takes Paypal?
"Prepare for the worst - hope for the best."
It's a script.
I have no spouse or children, so in the event of my unforeseen death, it'd be up to my parents or sisters to deal with my private files. At this point, about all they could do is shut everything down, and (if for some reason they were really curious... enough so to overcome their fear of finding out stuff they don't want to know) hire some geek to crack my systems. They're pretty secure as long as they're online, but with physical access to the drives and a "mount" command they'd be wide open. I suppose a better strategy would be to segregate out the stuff I don't want them to see and encrypt it. I do keep a master password list, itself password-protected, but since no one else on the planet knows that password, it'd go with me.
My uncle had the luxury of knowing he was dying, which gave him an opportunity to purge his files and his home of all the stuff he didn't want his mother and siblings to have to face (the sex toys and such that I know he once had), and to distribute anything of community/historical value (he was a legislator and a civil rights activist) to the appropriate people.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
That's what happened with the guy who found the cure to cancer.
the lesson is don't be greedy with your knowledge if you are not willing to share don't get any knowledge and for those who steal ideas for profit to stop such practice... is the right thing to do.
This link might be useful, its Eric S. Raymond's "continuity page".
I understand that the audience here at slashdot.org is primarily comprised of "techies," but is the most significant thing that you -- even as a techie/scientist/nerd/whatever -- will or want to leave behind is some (encrypted) "data" protected by passwords? I hope to do more than "create data" while I'm here on this planet. I sincerely hope there is more to life than this. (Maybe I'm in for a rude awakening. Yesterdays chop wood and carry water could be today's program computer, execute program.)
Forget my passwords and forget my data, remember (your relationship with) me.
Some cats swing, and others don't. Don't you be the kind that won't.
This is a topic I touched on in a newsgroup post almost a year ago. I was lamenting the lack of many example APL programs to learn APL from, and suggested making proprietary programs PD in your will. You spend a lot of effort to create a program, why should that intellectual effort be wasted when you die? Contribute it to society. Not every program you write is worth surviving its author, but there are some out there. Data analysis or scientific programs for example. Several months later, one of the group members passed away, and data analysis code he wrote to run a small profitable business, was made PD. I don't know if my suggestion had anything to do with it, but I was glad to see it happen.
Heisenberg may have been here.
i wrote a cron job and if i haven't been on the system in over X days it assumes i'm dead and alerts my family members and friends of the box and its contents.
my grandfather had great taste in porn.
Good thing I wasn't the one who had to go through his personal effects when he passed.
So, who did inherit his porn collection?
You can't take the sky from me...
Most people who work in those shitty-ass Cockbuster or whatnot-stores hate their jobs and would rather bite out their own jugular than be nice to the customers...
(my ex worked at a local Cockbuster... boy, was she pissed after a 10-hour shift!)
Après moi le déluge.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
I have a series of nemonics I use, each stored with the password (e.g. a file is named file.zip.i.pgp, where i is the nemonic). A key for all my passwords is 'encrypted' using a monoalphabetic substiution cipher (crackable with ease) which is stored in a locked cabniet. Key to be given to my executor, stored with my will. Also in the cabinet is a book on frequency analysis, for the luddites.
I am also working on a nice PHP class which can be activated by a password written in my will (which is in a sealed envelope at the moment) which posts a final entry on my blog.
There are files with which I don't store the nemonic - these are the encrypted things which will stay secret when I die. And hopefully we all live happily ever after.
"But everyone should know everything." -markab
I've made arrangements with my closest friend, in the event of my unexpected demise, he gets my computer and servers on the condition he sifts through all my data, files it, and backs it up somewhere safe. My life is defined in my data. My photo albums, my emails, the work I've done for school, personal journals, everything that defines who I am and what I have done. If my house was burning and I had to run, the first thing I'd take would be my hard drives.
Document containers consist of two thin layers of steel, which have a hydrated compound stored between them; used to be plaster of Paris, or calcium sulfate hemihydrate (same as gypsum sheetrock). Upon heating, the hydrate gives up its water, flooding the inside of the container with water vapor. This serves two purposes. The first is that the heat of vaporization absorbs large amounts of heat, so the container heats up less rapidly. The second is that the water vapor displaces oxygen, making it less likely that documents will burn- unless, of course, the container fails. Remember- it's just two pieces of sheet steel. A fire safe is not necessarily a burglar-resistant safe, and most of the common safes on the market can be manipulated ("cracked") very easily by even a novice- they're not SUPPOSED to prevent theft. One needs to purchase a UL-rated burglar resistant container for that sort of thing. Safes can combine theft and fire resistance ratings; consult a security professional (like a SAVTA member) for the appropriate safe.
Also important to remember is the location: If a safe is on the 2nd or 3rd floor, once that floor burns through, the container will fall. If it cracks open- there goes your contents. So- put it in the basement. BUT- make sure you don't have heavy objects located above it (refrigerators, etc.), which will crack it open. Put the safe on blocks if you can so that the contents aren't soaked from the firefighters flooding the basement!
Media containers should follow the same general rules (be careful where you put it, etc.), but work on a different principle. Last I checked (it could have changed), media containers use wood as insulation. This keeps the contents at an acceptable temperature, provided everything works. Wood is a great insulator, and it burns relatively slowly unless it is divided in a manner than allows combustion.
None of this means that every fire-rated safe will survive. In fact, a review of areas swept by wildfires in California in... 1991, IIRC, showed that even home-made safes worked as well in some instances as UL-rated containers. However, the best containers were all positioned in the slab, or in some other large, non-combustible heat sink. In-floor safes fare well, although exceptions (such as where the dial melted and dripped into the money stored within, causing most of it to burn) were noted.
So- in short, look for the UL rating. No, the $50 toy safe at the discount store isn't the same as the $500 media vault from a locksmith, even if they ARE both rated. No, the people who sold you the $50 safe will know nothing about how it works, or how well it will protect your data, or how to open it and retrieve your property if your house *does* burn down. No, the $50 safe will not come with a professional who knows how to open your container if something DOES happen to go wrong with it. A professional SAVTA member will be able to help you with all of this, as well as sell you the appropriate container.
But, of course, if you want to try the $50 safe, go right ahead if it helps you sleep better. They have to meet the minimum standards from Underwriter's Labs (UL 72 for Class 125 and Class 150 containers). And it will depend upon where you live (across from a fire station in a Class 1 noncombustible structure, versus Uncle Marty's trailer home, 25 minutes from the nearest volunteer fire department), of course. But for GOD'S SAKE, don't assume that because the label says "FIRE SAFE," that they're all the same, or that they'll save your data no matter what.
Disclaimer: No, I'm not a SAVTA member, and I don't currently work as a locksmith or a safe/vault technician.
Ideally, I'd like to have a method for cleaning up certain things. There are probably files I wouldn't want others to see, in addition to files I *do* want them to see, but only after my death. Might be interesting to write a script that they would be told to execute, that would clean stuff up and print out my will. Of course, I'd have to put in protections to keep it from being run before my death....
I did some work on this a while back, dealing with splitting up passwords among N people such that any M people could recover the password (MN, of course). That way they all have to agree I'm dead, which prevents cheating.
"As such, have you planned for the hereafter, and if so, how?"
Three words- Windows Task Scheduler. I've got it set to format the day after I die.
I must first preface this by saying I am a big physical security geek.
Many firesafes (especially the cheap ones)do not have an "endothermic reaction", but simply a water slurry in a liner between the outside and inside of the safe. If you remember your physics, specific heat of water is 4190J/kg K, and the heat of fusion is 330000J/kg or so. The vast majority of firesafes keep your documents cool and firefree by converting the water in their liners to steam, some of which does enter the inside of the safe in many cheap (think Sentry) models. Some firesafes have a tendency to be rather damp inside, so shopping around is a good idea.
And just to keep it on topic: All my usernames and passwords are kept in a sealed envelope in a safe that is kept in a seperate location from where I live. Sure a fire would toast it, but if I happen to die on the same night that a fire destroys those documents, well looks like everyone is SOL
Bury me with my hard drives.
... for this to be relevant.
Here's a hypothetical situation -- you keep all your finances (check register, bank balances, etc) in Quicken/M$FT Money/et al, as well as policy numbers, loan payment schedules, yada yada yada.
Your home directory is encrypted (via something like Mac OS X's FileVault) when stored, and decrypted only upon a successful login.
You're in a car wreck and are comatose for 6 months.
During that time, your car is repo'ed, your home is put up for sale due to lack of property tax payments (I think there are probably things to protect one from the mortgagor, but not from your friendly local gummint) -- you get the idea.
It's a good idea to have someone you trust (Fox Mulder notwithstanding) know how to get in and manage things in your absence.
If you're fortunate enough to have TWO people you trust (or almost trust), you might devise some sort of digital equivalent (this IS Slashdot, right?) of the old "2 halves of a dollar bill" key used in the movies. It would seem like a variant of the RSA scheme would work nicely. Maybe a large number that is the product of two (or as many trusted folk as you have) large primes could be the key to your digital castle...
Otherwise, recovering from a coma could be one of the most unpleasant surprises you'll ever have.
I think it would be kind of neat to give your children/nephews and such your username and password to slashdot, as well as other places you post at/belong to. Then they could have insight into your mind and stuff. See what type of person you were and such.
Would be pretty cool, unless you were a troll.
...
Think I should go erase all those old girlfriends' numbers?
Nah, I'll just let her think that I've been fooling around these past 10 years. hehe
She knows I'm one of the few truly loyal husbands that know what vows mean still in existence.
Not if they don't know about it. Not if they (or you) don't care about it. If you want to leave something behind, please be conspicuous about it. If you really want your "data" to live beyond your life don't hide it behind a password.
The only "data" that I've created that I wish to live on after I'm gone is comprised of sound -- primarily musical -- recordings. Many of them are digital in origin. I have many recordings that reside on my hard disk in my Linux box. (Unfinished compositions, musical fragments, lack-luster performances, etc... If my descendants can crack the password good for them, but I doubt they will try so I don't "bank" on this "data" becoming available to those other than myself.)
If I were to be hit by the proverbial "beer truck" today my benefactors will find my collections of recordings on Cd's (and some tapes that are considered secondary to my Cd's) with pertinent documentation attached to each recording. (Many duplicates exist on minidisc. These recordings can be accessed without a password but who would want to go through that entire collection?) Of course there will come a day when Cd's won't be the medium of choice. When that day comes -- and if I declare the recordings worthy of living beyond my body -- I will transfer them to the medium of choice at the time.
Leave that which you want to be found in plain sight; that which you do not, leave to obscurity.
Some cats swing, and others don't. Don't you be the kind that won't.
I am a ghost! You insensitive clod!!! Alright, sorry that was really cheap. Go ahead mod me down.
I had a friend who worked for a gov't agency. We went on vacation for about 2 weeks once and every morning at 9am he would send an e-mail from his cell phone, wait a few minutes for a confirmation and then continue his day. After a few days of this I asked him what the hell was going on. He informed me that if he didn't log-in to his computer daily by noon, it would auto-wipe a few gigs of encrypted data and inform his supervisors that he was either dead or captured. Now I'm not sure if it was his paranoia or if he really was doing something -that- important (he would never say anything about it), but I've taken up the same idea, although to a lesser extent. If I don't check my e-mail at least once every two weeks, I have some scripts set up that will e-mail someone my passwords, delete some info off my computer and encrypt a lot of data with a 512bit key so that I -can- get the data back if I happen to not be dead :-)
more often than I update my will.
You should, too.
(By that I mean change your passwords, not that you should update my will.)
Keeping your passwords in a kind of physical escrow - e.g. a bank safe-deposit box - should suffice.
I want to drag this out as long as possible. Bring me my protractor.
The same companies that make fireproof safes for paper also make them for media. My safe has a foam layer around the actual storage compartment. When exposed to high heat, the foam chemically turns into a very high-insulating material. The safe is certified to keep internal temperatures below 150 degrees F for 30 minutes in a fire whose temperatures exceed 1500 degrees. Or something like that. The safe was about $250, and is large enough to store two or three hard disks in removable caddies, and maybe ten jewel cases for DVDs/CDs, or maybe 25 small backup tape cartridges. I have all of my home video on DVD. There is a backup copy of each DVD in that fireproof safe, along with a large hard disk that has a backup of all of my personal data.
my concern is how can I get my data once I am at the other world. I guess I am not allowed to take CDs with me. I will ask friends to keep my personal SFTP servers running for few months after I am dead to collect my data.
To my dearest brother, I bequeath all of the binary "ones" stored within the hard drives of my home computer, to be delivered sequentially, one page per day, 5,000 "ones" per page, over a period of ten years.
To my dearest friend, I bequeath all of the binary "zeros" stored within the hard drives of my home computer, to be delivered sequentially, one page per day, 5,000 "zeros" per page, over a period of ten years.
After dissemination, the hard drive is to be digitally "erased" and shall be bequeathed to my dearest father, to whom I shall also bequeath the computer that is attached to said hard drives.
This message brought to you by Jack Schitt's Previously Shat Shit
Let the chips fall where they may
I suggest a safe deposit box for storing data and passwords. Many people have posted saying one should use a SAFETY deposit box, but this is a bad idea, as there is NO SUCH THING as a safety deposit box. Cripes, it's a box deposited in a safe, hence the name "safe deposit box". I know that when one speaks that phrase it sounds like "safety posit box", but take my word for it: it's actually a safe deposit box.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
When I die, I want those who visit the same forums I do to know that I have died. How can I make sure a death notice is posted, in the event of my death?
I'm immortal, you insensitive clod!
rm -life
Every time I typed in my password it kept being changed to asterisks, so I just changed my password to a bunch of asterisks.
Someone mentioned that we over estimate the value of our data. That's probably true.
While I acknowledge this, I've thought of the archiving issue too. I've been working on my web site www.bearcave.com since 1995. The material published on this web site represents the largest work I've completed that does not belong to someone else. I intend to keep adding to it. In the long run it may represent the largest work I've accomplished in my life.
Egotist that I am, I'd like it to survive me. I have searched and I did not find any web repository except for the Internet Archive, which attempts to archive the Internet. The Internet Archive has archived bearcave.com, so there is some chance that my work will be around when I'm not. The way things are going there will probably come a time when you can carry around the current Internet Archive in your pocket, so the costs of archiving should drop, which also provides some hope that the Internet Archive data itself will survive.
Unfortunately, the Internet Archive is not an ideal solution. Given bandwidth issues, they cannot afford to update too frequently. Also, while the Internet Archive is locally searchable, I don't think that is is searchable by search engines like Google. So material on the Internet Archive is not as accessible as other material on the Web.
There appears to be a possible business here (perhaps at the non-profit level). I'd be willing to pay money into an escrow account and a monthly fee to have my web site scanned weekly. The when I die my web site would no longer be scanned and my data be available to the web on the new site.
The problem with such a business is that it would probably have to be set up as a non-profit. The concentration of an archiving business is to pay its bills and survive in the long term, not make lots of money for its founders or shareholders.
There are some technical complexities as well. Internal links between web site pages would have to be changed so that they worked at the new location. But it should not be too difficult to write conversion software.
But what about the monkeys whose heads were transplanted onto the bodies of other monkeys? yes, they were partially paralyzed, but they were able to communicate using their heads in such ways that the researchers were able to confirm that the knowledge they had before transplantation, were still there after transplant. Thus, unless you stipulate that a human has a soul, or something else a monkey does not have, then YOU ARE YOUR BRAIN.
And if you think we have souls, then, well, you have "issues" that make this discussion moot....
eat shiat and bark at the moon
This reminded me of an app I saw sometime back called a deadmans switch so,
I googled it and it's at Arsware.
I really thought about setting it up and using it, but that random trip to Stuckey's
just might wipe out all that stuff I care about while I'm still pumping red stuff.
Similiar Story:
o l.gu est?u=sopgod&a=view&i=1&r=http://www.geocities.com /CollegePark/Quad/3985/contents.html
John and his GF were killed by a drunk driver (.27! BAC) on Mothers Day.
His death damaged his family; his sister has undergone many treatments for eating disorders.
It also wounded the rest of us.
Until recently his webpages, taken back in 1999, were up. Geocities just removed them finally; I feel like part of me is gone now.
His old blog is at
http://www.htmlgear.tripod.com/gw/guest/contr
I had to email them and beg to get it restored; I'm not above groveling.
Yahoo, unfortunately, has told me to go 'screw off' and won't do anything about restoring his pages, even if it's just long enough to create a copy site.
Did it once before in the past, but that backup I just discovered was dead.
Miss ya John.
eom
Slashdot Eds Link Anonymous Posts With Logged Posts
They Are Vermin Feeding On Each Other's Feces.
I Hate \.
Can you honestly tell me you haven't seen or heard of this man every bit as often as Richard M Stalin or Linux Torvalds? We are greater in death.
Yes.
My father died suddenly about a year ago. He maintained 3 different web sites, one personal, one for a sailing club he belonged to, and one for his cousin's business. He was the sole contact for two of the registrar, plus there were web hosting passwords, ftp server passwords, isp account passwords, email account passwords. Luckily, my mother and I knew all his passwords and have been able to keep everything running. Security is important but it's not a bad idea to have someone else know how to get in to certain things just in case. Email is probably the most important thing because you can usually get people to change your password and email you the new one.
set softtabstop=4 shiftwidth=4 expandtab nocp worlddomination
Use a master password and have at least one other person you trust implicitly, who knows it. "Security risk," blah blah. If you don't even have one person in the world who you can trust with your passwords while alive, then there really isn't anyone important enough to need your data when you're dead. I trust pacts more than passwords. Pacts can't be cracked.
literally: (adj) figuratively
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
Why does death have to be depressing for all involved? Craft an elaborate game in your data that's complex enough to take (at least) weeks to fully unravel, such that if anyone starts getting into it while you're still alive, you'll know about it.
We have books, many written by the now dead so why shouldn't or websites work the same way i.e. http://home.san.rr.com/cneal92/
http://home.san.rr.com/cneal92/slander.html
Why should I worry about what happens to my data after I "die"? This simulation I'm experiencing will just go away when I unplug from it.
yeah i'm actually in the middle of it.
some of it's chemical (brain and all that grey matter isn't getting enough chemicals)
sucks bawlz.
One of the key things my psychologist pointed out to me when I was beating depression was the idea of altering your brain chemistry. If you think a certain way, you can change the nature of your thoughts patterns. With depression you are constantly thinking negative thoughts. The negativity breeds more negativity and, as the parent said, you don't "just snap out of it".
g nitive.htm
What helped me a lot was to recongize certain negative thought patterns as "cognitive distortions". Once you recognize it, you can work at changing it - retraining your brain. Or, translated into Geek: "You must unlearn what you have learned."
This link describes the concept of cognitive distortions: http://depression.about.com/cs/psychotherapy/a/co
Magnatune: Quality (DRM-free) MP3/FLAC/
Of course, everybody else thinks exactly the same way as you.
Not, fuckwit.
When I die, I want to give all my data to a charity.
;)
Some will want to incinerate all their data and to send the ashes of their data to the ocean.
Interesting, Slashdot. Just a sec, I'll come up with other interesting and linspired topics
I currently encrypt everything, the way I see it as time goes by and as
_ ________
technology increases or as newer ways of breaking AES style encryption in
much-less-than-brute force methods are developed, the encryption on my data
will be broken, this will probably be 50-100 years after I am dead. If at
that time there are still people interested in knowing who I was and what
I knew, then I think they deserve to have my access to my stored information.
Sad thing is just like how today there is barely anyone in the
world that can read the data off the first phonograph style rolls I doubt
in the future there will be anyone with the hardware or motivation to read
data off such things as CDs, DVDs and of course hard disks.
In any case data produced over a lifetime is only one of many different
dimensions for which a person's worth can be measured from a historical
point of view.
I Digress...
Arash Partow
_________________________________________
http://www.partow.net
Arash Partow's Philosophy: Be a person who knows what they don't know, and not a person who doesn't know.
Let me guess - Back Door Sluts 9?
"What do you think?" "I think 'What, do you think?!'"
I intend to have finished my personality simulation, which I presume will take the necessary steps to protect itself.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
I laughed so hard.....
eat shiat and bark at the moon
The only personal data I really care about when I die is my organic computer's (aka brain).
Instead of wishing or hoping that it gets ftp'd by wireless connection to the big sysop in the sky (if he's there), I'd instead rather have it copied and placed on a new machine.
su - /home/deadguy/deadguyfile deadguyfile
rootpassword
chown root deadguyfile
exit
mv
vi deadguyfile
Of course, if the file is encrypted, then no go.
This has to be some kind of karma-whoring self-promoting bot...
:-)
You're new here, aren't you?
DAILY ROTATION
if my oncologist is right, I won't be needing posthumous data storage, since he says the CAT scan didn't find any cancer this time. a summer without chemo! woo hoo!
divide the password among several people - when enough of them get together, they can decrypt the data.
you can impliment pretty complicated ACLs with this.
there is a more accurate term for it, i am hazily remembering from applied cryptography. i'd welcome someone to remind me.
Keep your packets off my GNU/Girlfriend!
OK, I know shouldn't do this, but what the hell.
I'm familiar with that list. I spent some time on alt.suicide.holiday (or ASH, as we call it). Unfortunately it doesn't include my favorite book on the topic, Dr. Geo Stone's Suicide and Attempted Suicide: Methods and Consequences.
Amazon.com link
So in response Mr. Anonymous Troll, I've been in the grip of despair and with the help of others (and I'm not ashamed to admit the Son of God Himself) I've beaten it.
Until you've got something constructive to say, get back under your rock.
- Neil Wehneman
My legal education, in nifty podcast format
Every day I run md5sum on my hard disk and write the number on my whiteboard. I figure that by the time I die they'll have figured a way to reconstruct the original data. Until then, I think it's pretty secure.
Have a cronjob that runs a script every month to see when you last logged in. The script could email you if you haven't logged in with a reminder to log in if you're still alive. it could search the net for your name in news articles. It could mail your lawyer saying no response has been received and asking whether you are deceased. If the lawyer replies to the message at your host, the script does a "rm -rf /Home/username/*" or whatever. Or have it email the lawyer your password info. Easy!
;-). In fact there is a company that will do this for you :(
You could, in a macabre fashion, have the script email everyone you know with a death letter, but that might be going overboard
Most posts discuss what happens to the data, and most mention porn, others mention software, ...etc.
...etc.). What about your emails that you meticulously kept for 10 or 15 years.
All that is good and all, but there is more than that. Think about your accounting records for example (Quicken, GnuCash,
That is the stuff on your computer. What about the stuff you put on the net in one form or another? For example that blog you setup? Or that web site?
Once you die, the PC eventually becomes obsolete or unusable. Chances are, your spouse of kids are not interested in what is the computer, and it is gone. Your web hosting account will probably be terminated due to non-payment.
Before archeology, our only sources of data on past civilizations was from historians. These were often porfessional people writing for posterity, and had some bias or other.
After archeology came into play in the 19th century, our knowledge of past civilization had a quantum leap, after we found fragments of daily life from average people (like you and me and him). Whether it was Greek ostraca, or baked clay tablets with list of goods, or pottery shards with writing practice in hieroglyphs.
Which brings me to the point of this post: the bigger picture, not individuals, or families, but societies and civilizations.
All this meta data about humanity in the last 2 decades of the 20th century, and the 21st century is on perishable and fragile media. It is even volatile (web hosting account?)
How would people several centuries from now view this entire civilization? How would they guage the reaction to say Sept 11, or invasion of Iraq? Would they see the US population as pro or anti war, or divided evenly? How would Bin Laden and Bush be assessed? Blair? Aznar? How would they get a glimpse into people's daily life.
Remember that as things are happening, it is easy to think that the information you gather on the event/person/concept are always clear and available. However, if you give it a decade or two, you yourself will not remember much details. How about people from a different culture/mindset/civilization/society? What would they think and how would they perceive you from the little they manage to recover?
The only hope here is the wayback machine at http://www.archive.org But will it endure? Is it enough?
2bits.com, Inc: Drupal, WordPress, and LAMP performance tuning.
I'm going to have someone print out ALL of my data on greenbar paper. Then it'll be shredded and used as confetti at my funeral, and perhaps as extra padding for my pine box.
If you're the type of person whose data is important to others when you pass, then you'll probably already have staff to take care of it.
I had to work on a computer of a person that had died a few monthes ago. When I got online, ICQ opened and connected. It felt a little bit creepy, and I wondered what people who had him on their list thought!
"As such, have you planned for the hereafter, and if so, how?"
.. quite unexpectedly (it was my grandmother who was on the brink of death, who suddenly sprung back to life, only to have her love pass away during a routine mid-evening nap .. lifes funny sometimes.) Anyway, during the last couple years, he started handling all his finances, using quicken .. which, of course, was passworded. This caused a mild hassle - no one knew how much money, really, he had, and where the money was. My grandmother never handled the money, ever. Eventually the password _was_ 'cracked', but had it not, it would have caused some problems.
Being relatively young, I must say, "no I have not."
However, last year my grandfather had passed away
Basically, if you have important data on your HD that will be needed after you pass away, access to that data will need to be left behind - perhaps in your will, or with a trusted love one. It's ultimately the responsible thing to do.
but when you get to that point, there's the issue of wether you even *want* to change things anymore. I'd say I'm depressed (medically speaking, although I've not been diagnosed by anyone) and just getting my ass out of bed is very hard to do each day.
I can look at my life and say yeh, I'm not happy, and there's lots of things that could change to make it better. Problem is that I've already been in that better place - shortly before it all turned to shit and I landed up here. What's to stop it happening again? Nothing. I've gotten through the worst of it - the out-of-control phase and the suicidal phase - and now I just don't give a shit. Being depressed is actually a choice now, because the alternative of getting better and later hitting that rock bottom again just isn't worth the risk to me. If it happens again, I know I'll top myself because it's a less painful option than 3 or 4 years of being fucked up.
BTW, one of the catch-22s is that "cognitive distortions" work both ways. Your shrink is messing with you in a good way rather than the bad way you may have been doing it to yourself. Same process is going on though, and likely niether are "reality". Still, if it works for you that's great.
Forget thrust, drag, lift and weight. Airplanes fly because of money.
I sat down once to write down all of my usernames and passwords for the various websites I frequent, but I was disrupted by a phone call.
This guy 'John' calls me out of the blue and said I didn't need to waste my time writing all this out, because this dog he called 'carnivore ' had it taken care of.
I just brushed this guy off as a drunk, but maybe this Ashcroft guy really needs to see a psydoc.
Maybe I should land it on GNOME CVS before I get another drive failure. ;-)
*Freaky!*
it's the answer to life, the universe and everything :-)
I'm sure mr. adams would agree
Seeing automated network down messages appear, and pinging the new york office somehow expecting it to reply.
And then we killed what was left of the network by streaming cnn..
I'm not going.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
Hello,
9 04 8482
I posted a reply to another comment before I saw yours. Perhaps you could look at it and see if I'm talking out my rear again?
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=106241&cid=
I've never tried Effexor... I thought that drug was used a lot to treat OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder) and FMS (Fibromyalgia syndrome) in conjunction with depression? :P). Oh, and I hear Celexa's sister drug, Lexapro, is really good shit too.
:)
Anyways, i've got a form of anxiety disorder, and my SSRI of choice is Celexa (aka: Cipramil, Apertia, Cipram, Elopram, Lupram, Prisdal, Sepram and Seropram). I was on Paxil for a while, and that stuff was utter crap. But then I switched to Celexa and its worked great, and the only side effect is a slightly increased thirst (but hey, I was never drinking enough water before anyways
Just wanted to give those two drugs my props.
I've got my thoughts and observations to pass on to my (adult) kids on a 5.25" Apple II diskette - what more do I need?
What, no one else uses the GNU Public Will?
RMS would probably insist that my proper title would be GNU/Sam.
Karma Clown
Besides , he knows how to boot a rescue disk if that fails.
Slashdot: Where nerds gather to pool their ignorance
changed the password to "something reasonable" I suggest you change it again as a dictionary attack would eventually get it. Not bad though.
Make a cron job to delete all of your important data. I will call it a pr0n job.
WHO CARES WHAT HAPPENS TO YOUR DATA IF YOUR'E DEAD! Seriously, besides not being able to think about it, i'd be more worried about being dead than worried about my personal data.
Now, what other people do to dead peoples data is only important for living people. I dont think many dead people who are having their data "used" really give a shit about it!
I was eating my breakfast while reading /. Now I have to wash my keyboard...
--Coder
Many "attempted" suicides are more of a call for help than an actual suicide attempt, and it seems that they often fail because the person alerts someone to what's going on. For instance, people threaten to jump from somewhere only to climb back down again. Or to take an overdose of something but tell others about it in time to get saved. And it can really work, too - that I know out of personal experience (suffice to say I wasn't the person with problems).
Contrast this with people who shoot or hang themselves when there's noone around to help, or jump from somewhere without seeking attention first.
I'm not saying that most people who kill themselves wouldn't have wanted to be stopped, but I think it's hard to know whether they wanted to or not. I just don't think that people who "fail" to kill themselves are very representative of those who do.
This signature is not in the public domain.
If I don't login or phone up my server on my broadband connection once a week a packet of thermite will burn strait through the hard drive about 5 min after unleashing a virus to all the web servers that store any of my data that will write /dev/urandom bits to every sector of the hard drive till the power button gets hit using the dd command.....I have three backup systems hidden in cron jobs on severs accross the world...if my adsl account is inaccessable for more than 30 days...and the web data I have on my servers is still intact...the cron app will activate the virus to wipe those systems...of course I probably shouldn;t be telling you any of this..
A very good friend of mine had an account on my system when he was killed (hit by a bus while bike riding). That was almost 9 years ago, and it wasn't that long ago that I finally removed the account. Though it was only the first couple of years that I really couldn't bring myself to do it, after that, I pretty much forgot about it until I was doing some housekeeping. But I still had to tell myself "get over it already".
I have a password manager, and the password to it locked up. A couple people know that (I suppose a few more do now ;-) ) and where it's kept "just in case". The good friend killed bike riding I mentioned in another post here had his quicken password protected without such provisions, which made it more difficult for his family to deal with the financial aspects of settling affairs...
My mum died of heart failure quite suddenly, around five years ago. My dad keeps her email account open (it shares a domain with the rest of the family, so it's no extra cost) because every so often she'll still get an email from some overseas colleague or contact. What she still gets most of, unsurprisingly, is spam; hundreds of messages in a month, to an account that not only never opens email, but hasn't sent anything since she passed away.
ben_ the technologist and platform agnostic
I have a little fire safe that I keep important stuff in, like car titles, contracts and cd-rom backups of my computer files.
Check the UL rating. If you use it just for a locking container, it's probably OK. But almost all home fire safes will not protect recorded media. They are rated to protect paper from scortching. The car registration will be fine except for the melted blob of plastic on it. Find offsite storage for plastic recordable media for fire protection. A home fire safe is no protection from fire.
The truth shall set you free!
Of course, every Bob Dylan song is better when played or sung by someone not named Bob Dylan.
Isn't this a little irrelevant for geeks? Any nerd worth his ill fitting clothing has his system secured enough that no one will find his pr0n when he kicks the bucket. I would hope that basic security preventing a thief from getting information from a stolen laptop would prevent mothers from coming across the hidden cache of Tiffany Teen videos.
One thing I am suprised I have not seen mentioned is what about various IP you bought?
Can all your I-Tunes be transfered? What about various lifetime subscriptions to online sites or compuiter programs? If I buy a lifetime account for some online video game, do the contracts state that it is terminated on my death?
"Man, my grampa died and all he left me was his 50 year old Everquest IV character..."
or
"Awesome, my grandpa left me his 54,294 level Mage that his father started 80 years ago."
--cryos are mobile.
--cryos are stored in a stable location, easy to move.
--cryos do not need electricity to stay cool.
We are way ahead of you....
eat shiat and bark at the moon
Since most /. readers seem to use linux, this is probably relevant. Use the root account. Give it to a friend you trust, of failing that, you can just let whoever gets the computer read the files. Just load into GRUB, press e to edit the kernel arguments, and boot to single user mode. pwd root, enter the password, and it's done, someone can get your files after you die. This obviously won't work with encrypted files, but if you think people should only get them after you die, then you shouldn't encrypt them in the first place, just chmod 700 them.
This has to be some kind of karma-whoring self-promoting bot
No, it's not Mike Bouma. It occasionally happens that the mirroring is useful. Bouma would never do anything useful.
I don't think anyone's saying that data is the most important thing. Your relatives might want to read your correspondence, or maybe get some pics from your digital photo albums. Data isn't very important compared to relationships, but it shouldn't be ignored. Besides, you have relationships with people online who won't know that you died unless your family gets your passwords and addressbook so they can send email.
#define X(x,y) x##y
Peter Cordes ; e-mail: X(peter@cordes ,
Your information will be used to vote for a president of course. Nothing like dead people voting, it brings a tear to my eyes.
As someone who has to face depression every day (from the young age of 12, 1990) I can confirm that having depression is not just being sad. It's more than that.
Having depression (not the same thing as being depressed) is feeling so bad and helpless that in order to cope with such negative feelings one either 'switches off', that is, loses all interest in everything or contemplates suicide.
As a person that went very near to wiping himself out of existence I can say that a suicide attempt is often used as a final attempt at calling for help at people that don't really understand what's wrong with you.
On the other hand actual suicide is the ultimate means of ending all the internal suffering depression causes. And believe me death IS an option for ending depression. Ahough meds are a little less effective than the option just mentioned it's a better option in most cases.
So next time you meet someone with depression take care; you really might need access to his/her data real soon.
- "They misunderestimated me."
Yeah baby!
I dont plan to die, you insensitive clod!
Update the contents monthly or as needed. An out-of-date password list is just as bad as a missing one.
Plan for the worst case: your home is destroyed and you are killed. A cheery thought.
My wife is an antique dealer, and as such, we do estate sales. On two sales where when we were going through old people's stuff to sell, we found photographs. The wierd part is that one of those people was a great aunt-in-law, and there were sexually explicit Polaroids! On the other sale, we found detailed to-do lists, involving candle wax and leather items.
All I can say is, get rid of this stuff before you die, or someone will find it!
If you have heart problems or asthma you could buy it at any random moment. Don't be caught off guard!
Make sure the family that caused you all that trauma growing up has something uniquely YOU when you finally buy it. Make a computer that has a distilled collection of your best most depraved porn, files on non-xtian religions, libertarian/anarchist literature, your most outlandish stuff.
An out of touch family member who is busy building churches in Haiti and wallowing in their own religious delusions won't know that your real boxen were spirited away by friends when you bought it. They'll think that nice little AMD K6-400 box with the random mix of old sub 10gig drives packed to the gills with goat porn, rap mp3s, and Crowley OTO stuff was your main machine.
If you are a one machine sort of person, make an image of the computer you want them to see if you die off, and a script to secure delete your real stuff and overwrite it with the image. Setting conditions to activate the script that would most likely indicate that you were dead.
I think the data should be written to some kind of storage medium and buried with the body, the deceased might need it in the next life.
I don't need a compass to tell me which way the wind shines.
- real estate (house, summer place),
- monetary assets (bank, liquidity, stock),
- vehicles (car, motorcycle, boat),
- other valuables (antiques, silverware),
- personal goods (books, music),
- memory lane (letters, family pictures)
The point in common with all the above is that everything is a material asset whose location can easily and quickly be determined.The new thing since the proliferation of computers and the Internet is that people suddenly have immaterial assets to be considered too, but their existence might well be unknown or their location unclear.
Then, proving credentials to get access to the data can be difficult:
For instance, just think how Internic handles domain transfers when your ISP disappeared or locked you out - they want confirmation from the same e-mail address used to register the domain, yet you cannot access that account right now.
what if the deceased's data is hosted in a foreign country, in an attempt to escape local laws forbidding that type of online content? Picture a case where you know for fact that the deceased scanned and stored important data, uploaded it to a foreign server, but left no trace of the password anywhere. how do you recover the data?
Add to this the fact that people might create e-mail or shell accounts on different hosts for different purposes: free software development, meeting sex partners, job, other hobbies... How do you keep track of them all, yourself? Can you positively say whether you still have an account on the Dead Hackers Society BBS and what the password might be? What about that free e-mail account that you use to correspond with your mistress to whom you had promised to give that old but cozzy summer place nobody else but you and her knows about?
This being said, I just got married and these are all things I have to worry about, as I update my last will... *yikes*
Software is not supposed to be about how to work around a useability issue. - Ken Barber
When I was about to board a plane for a trip to China and Korea, I had a strange feeling. I didn't know what it was, but it prompted me to call up my friend and tell him the login for my linux box. I told him that in the event of my demise he should save certain files and give them to my parents (short stories, poems and long stories that I had written) and to destroy the pr0n.
Luckily I didn't die and my pr0n was saved...
Why did I lurk so long before registering for a Slashdot account? I could have had a Slashdot ID of less than 100000.
Unless your data truley benefits mankind (it will make the world a better place) why worry about it. Life is too short.
Risk management.
"Not being (socially) happy" is a risk that can be managed, just like "getting killed on the way to work" or "being defrauded" or "getting fired". I would say that not giving a shit about something is roughly equivalent to accepting a risk as the cost of doing business. Some times, remaining in business becomes too risky, so one plans an "exit strategy", to push the analogy a little. :)
Re: "cognitive distortions". Most people don't realize that reality is largely arbitrary, and that the only reason we have anything in common with one another is because relatively similar chemical processes are occuring in our bodies given relatively similar starting conditions [/handwave]. It really trips people up when you start messing around with this chemistry and end up fundamentally changing perceptions, e.g. ergot root and visions of God, or the drug that causes near death experiences. It is pretty sad that most (bad) sci fi authors and lame-ass counter-revolutionary types make a lot of hay out of this simple realization. Heh. That was a pun. Get it? Bah, never mind.
Well, that was fun, but I really ought to get back to doing something important, like work or something. More Pils, please, "Bob"!
I'm proud of my Northern Tibetian Heritage
I have, and documented on Slashdot and other forums, my bouts with depression and suicide. I have since gotten better.
A friend of mine, my best friend actually, killed himself in 1999. We were able to guess the secret answer to get into his Yahoo account and see who he had contacted and let them know that he passed on. Once we had access to his Yahoo account, we got the password to his ICQ account from it. No clue in either accounts as to why he committed suicide.
Most of his stuff ended up in a rental locker, and a year ago his widow was going to take the stuff out and inventory it, so she called the rental locker to cancel the account. The next day the locker was cleaned out, everything was gone. He had written stories, RPG game adventures, computer programs, had a ton of books and videos, a lot of IP that he worked on. A goldmine of stuff, but it was all stolen the day his widow called to cancel the account.
A fraction of the stuff, Traveller, AD&D, books were given to me for safe keeping as we were still using them in role playing games. My best friend was the Referee and another friend took over and needed access to the books. That is all that is left of his legacy beides his widow and daughter and whatever family he had left (his mother died of cancer soon after he killed himself).
So basically theives took over the best parts of his life that was left over, and only a few trusted friends have what is left that was not stolen. No matter what, the theives cannot steal our memories of him. Rest in peace, my good friend.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
1. Wife has main password to my machines, in the event I die unexpectedly - she can get to my memoirs and writings (most of the rest of the stuff is just information I collected doing research on various subjects). Conversely, I am the system admin on my home network, so I already have access to everyone's computer - so if one my family members dies (heaven forbid) I will be able to peruse their drives as needed.
2. In the event of a terminal illness over a longer time, I will burn a CD of the stuff I want them to have (will save them having to go through a bunch of extraneous files after my death).
Lodragan Draoidh
The more you explain it, the more I don't understand it. - Mark Twain
Protect all your passwords with Keyring for PalmOS or a similar application, and lock the master password to Keyring in a safe in a bank.
When you die, your children/spouse/parents/etc get the keys to the safe, open it, get the master password and unlock Keyring. Then they get access to all your digital stuff.
I found a (younger) friend and asked him to be my literary executor. I plan to send him a CD this summer with html copies of all my journals for the past 10-15 years, and all my emails (even the spam) for the past 7. I plan to send it encrypted, and to leave the password with my will, with instructions to send it to him. I'll leave him some $$$, and he's agreed to buy web space and post the entire thing.
This discussion let me to think about also including my CVS repository of all my code. I'll think about this and probably do it.
Now that I think about it, having the password with my will introduces a single point of failure. I need to find a better way to deal with that.
The first is clinical depression, which means that chemicals are screwed up in your brain...
The second is situational depression, which basically means your life sucks.
And if your brain is screwed up, AND your life sucks, you post on Slashdot...
how long until
I can't be your girlfriend, but I will be your friend if you need one. I'm the same age and in a similar situation. Our situation is not that uncommon. Maybe we should start an organization. You say you want revenge, but I think you just need back what has been stolen from you through government redistribution of wealth. For example, student loans have resulted in massive increases in education cost. If I adjust my BSCS education for inflation as a result of the student loan program I would have needed a student loan, but now I still have 12k in debt with no computer job.
I have started doing something about this, because I am concerned about providing for my wife if something were to happen to me. I have started documenting everything about my computer, online accounts, financial data, etc, so someone could care for my wife (who is in the early stages of alzheimer's) - or even take care of me, if necessary.
The two problems are a) who would take on this responsibility, and b) where do I put all this info so that it cannot be used until I *want* it to be used. I am talking to friends, family, lawyers, etc - but it would seem like this would not be an unusual situation.
One small component of this is making sure the appropriate person gets notified if something happens to me. I *thought* I remembered a software package or web site that operated as a "dead-man switch" - if you did not check in periodically, it would assume you were dead and take appreoriate actions - like delete pr0n, send email notification, etc. But I have not been able to find this. Any suggestions?
Q.
Insert Signature Here
I'd be interested in these scripts too.
As an alternative to keeping a copy of your current passwords around on paper, do what I do. Encrypt your passwords using conventional encryption using either PGP or GPG, either one is great. Encrypt your passwords to this conventional encryption with the answer to a question as the passphrase. The question should be one that only your coworkers or wife will know the answer to. (This in itself is simple on both windows and linux so I will refrain from explanation, there are instructions that come with both pgp and gpg)
To enable your coworkers etc to find out that you have hidden your passwords thus in the event of your death, write in your will that you have encrypted your passwords and that to decrypt the passphrase is the answer to a question. Then write the question in the will. Be sure the question has only one answer, which can be found without trying mutiliple different ways of capitalizing words. This prevents your lawyer from attempting to gain entry or get nosy, and it keeps your coworkers out of your files while you are still alive.
Everytime you change your passwords, encrypt them with the same passphrase as the answer to the question in the will, and send the encrypted text at the end of your emails to people. To solve the issue with pr0n that some of you seem to have, I suggest you place all of your sensitive data inside an encrypted partition of your harddrive that you can make using pgp or gpg. This partition will only be accessible to you and anyone else you deem should know about it. When encrypted like that you have no need to run a special delete-if-not-accessed-by script. If you do not personaly tell anyone the passphrase, then no one will even know it exsists at all unless you name it something like 'my porn'. Even then, no one can get in without the passphrase so your butt is covered.. even though you are dead.
No scary "I'm dead this is my password" messages, no need to constantly update your will with your new passwords, and no need to have a porn buddy to cover up your secret stash if you die. Just make sure that you keep your current passwords in a file someplace just like you said they would be in your will. A personal blog works great, just tell them to look through it for your encrypted post or you can send it to your trusted friends at the ends of your messages and leave them to guess what it is.
As long as you keep your passwords up to date in the encrypted text, and you make sure the text is saved by your friends or online, this method is as secretive as you want it to be, no one needs to know that you are hiding pr0n or that you are preparing for your possible death.
M2'd
Flash drive suppository.
I'm in the hole of the broadband donut.