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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.
...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
MyLastEmail offers a service somewhat similar to this.
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 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.
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
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
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
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.
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???
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.
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?
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.
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.
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'.
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...
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
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.
...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)
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.
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....
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'll be dead.
Doesn't matter to me. All my passwords are on a yellow post-it note attached to my monitor.
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.
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.
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.
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.
--
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
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.
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.
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.
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...
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.
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 :-)
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
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.
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.
eom
Slashdot Eds Link Anonymous Posts With Logged Posts
They Are Vermin Feeding On Each Other's Feces.
I Hate \.
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.
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/
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.
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.
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
Agreed.
Generally there are two types of depression, although you rarely get one without aspects of the other. They also tend to feed off of each other.
The first is clinical depression, which means that chemicals are screwed up in your brain and you need medication. I was on so many different meds over the years until we finally found one that worked.
The second is situational depression, which basically means your life sucks. This can be manifested through physical or emotional abuse or so many other factors. Mine was more situational than chemical, but that's all relative. The chemical aspect alone would have been enough to take me out of life.
I refer to mine as "clinical depression" even though it was more situational just because that forces people to realize that there is a medical aspect to it.
My saying is that "medication gets you stable, counseling gets you fixed." If the meds that you are on aren't working and haven't been for several weeks, SWITCH. Effexor is what finally did it for me, but everyone is different.
Once you get some semblance of stability back, you have to get professional counseling. As my high school girlfriend's mother put it, "it took years for you to get that way, it's going to take years for you to get out." It's true, and you can't do it alone. Get help so you can talk through what has happened to you and get yourself sorted out.
Take care of yourself my friend.
- Neil Wehneman
which a great deal of mine was, and I simply refer to
My legal education, in nifty podcast format
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.
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.
Maybe I should land it on GNOME CVS before I get another drive failure. ;-)
*Freaky!*
What, no one else uses the GNU Public Will?
RMS would probably insist that my proper title would be GNU/Sam.
Karma Clown
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".
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.
You are correct that there are two types of depression, but your labels are incorrect.
Clinical depression is a simply a legal/medical term that means it has been diagnosed by a physician (or perhaps a psychologist), and is on your medical record somewhere. It has nothing to do with chemical imbalances per se.
Situational depression is the normal depression that occurs after a negative life-event such as the death of a loved one. It is normally temporary.
I think what you really mean to say is that there is chronic depression (often caused by chemical imbalances) and situational depression (caused by life-events). Situational depression can trigger or exacerbate chronic depression.
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.
- 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
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.
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?
Required reading for internet skeptics