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Your Data and Cyber Business After You're Gone
Reader Mountain Splash writes "The New York Times has a decent thought-inspiring article questioning what happens to our stored data and who owns the rights to it after we die. I have to admit that, while this dilemma had already crossed my mind many months ago, I've been rather slow to do something about handling it. While considering the same, though, what I did do was start a very detailed list of my many various emailboxes, IM monikers, cyber buddies, and yes, passwords (complete with encrypted hints to be stored separately). I have also already approached my roomie and my sister about following up with that list for me as a last wish if and when the inevitable should occur. Just wondering if everyone else has done the same or similar... Anyone gone so far as to have already filed their information along with their will with their family lawyer?"
I don't really care enough about what happens to my e-mail after I die to bother with all that crap. I don't really think anybody really is going to need my encrypted data after I died, or they would have had a key while I was alive.
Yeah, I think so. 599 comments on the subject. Let's just all refer to that, shall we?
HERE
Dupe-esqe, at least
I have also already approached my roomie and my sister about following up with that list for me as a last wish Rather gloomy but it did get me thinking about all the friends I only communicate with via email. If I look the wrong way crossing the road I'll just vanish from their sight.
---
We spoke for about a half an hour. I don't recall a thing we said. - Colorblind James Experience
Isn't it simpler to just not die?
Not really related to stored data and passwords, but a friend of mine has a deal with his sister, that if he unexpectedly dies, she will clean all porn out of his apartment and get rid of it so the rest of the family will never know.
I shall go and tell the indestructible man that someone plans to murder him.
For business related death I have prepared extensive documentation on servers, passwords, accounts, banking relationships, etc. and have filed that in my bank lock-box. I have informed my attorney whom I wish to have handle those affairs in my absence (a trusted friend/partner). The attorney has that on record in my will. The asset disposal itself is a normal course of handling the estate, but telling Amazon, PayPal, Authorize.net, and others who have my finanicals to shut off my account is no small effort. Finding the trusted friend is not trivial either.
is stored on a 40GB CF card, which stays around my neck, when I am creamated - it goes with me. All of the backups are on offbrand DVD-R's so they will be unreadable after 6 months anyway
I willed all my porno passwords to the grandkids. Don't let them end up in probate.
Why, PDU-1, of course!
While terminally ill, Mr. Cochran, a programmer, left a full list of passwords for his work files with his employer, Mr. Purnell said. But he failed to do the same thing with the personal files, so they are now inaccessible.
Maybe he didn't want anyone reading his personal files? That seems like the most obvious explanation to me.
I think that as a culture, we need to learn how to let go of things. In the past, information was more ephemeral; books would decay or be lost over time. Just because we have the capacity virtually eternal data storage doesn't mean we should.
In a way, I think holding on to every minute detail of someone's life devalues the things of importance they left behind. Do you think they really want to be remembered by their tax returns? Would they have wanted their grandchildren to inherit their file of meeting notes? If someone wants to leave important digital information to posterity, they should put that intent in their will, and (*gasp*) maybe even make a hard copy of it.
Obviously if someone dies suddenly, that may not be an option. But my point is that we, the survivors, need to relearn how to distinguish between valuable data and stuff better left forgotten.
I saw that article when I was eating breakfast this morning and did give it some thought... it could be worth giving your passwords to a lawyer/trusted associate, but I wonder just from a geeky point of view if something like a physical key (i.e. a flash drive) with an automated password system on it might be better... just plug it in and the person has postmortum access. But then again an up-to-date password and access data list might be more useful - or you could set it up as an email based system - if you don't reset a message within a certain time block, the uber-file with all of your passwords gets sent to your lawyer or lawyer equlivient. Well, its an idea.
(complete with encrypted hints to be stored separately)
"Wait, i'll read it out loud!"
"TO UNCOVER ALL MY PASSWORDS LOVE,
LOOK UP INTO THE STARS ABOVE!
THE CHEERING CROWDS GAZE WITH FUN
FROM LOCATION THIRTY ONE!"
"Stars above? What does it mean!"
"I've got it! To the Planetarium! The next clue must be under seat thirty one!"
"Man, i'm so glad Bill died. I'm having the time of my life!"
Last year I gave my supervisor a sealed, labeled envelope containing the various usernames and passwords I use, and the various ways that I change them from time to time, just in case something happens to me.
When I first gave it to her, she immediately ripped it open, not fully comprehending what it was. I had to snatch it out of her hands, exclaiming, "I'm not dead yet!" I sealed it into another envelope and she put it in her drawer, where it has remained untouched to this day (I assume).
You are in error. No-one is screaming. Thank you for your cooperation.
This is something that I maintain through my company as a matter of policy. The company maintains life insurance for me and also an electronic access store to be certain that company information is always accessible in an emergency. The convenient side-effect is that my personal information is also protected in this way. And yes, I do trust this information to the company and we do have policies covering assurety of this information being purged by the lawyers when we get sacked, etc. This works in the same way that my wife gets my company provided life insurance, my 401k, and my personal information cache.
Make that HERE
It is immortalized in duped articles on /.
It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men. -Frederick Douglass
...all the spam I get can keep it. The rest is really not that important!
The reality is...
Nobody cares about your data. They just want your money, which is easy enough to find.
After reading through GiBs of your old mail, they will see that you have a secret swiss bank account with some cash????
Yeah sure...
Don't overestimate your importance in this world.
--
ee
Antiquated competence won't be a job skill forever.
I have some good friends online that I value just as much as my real life friends. If I were to up and die today, I would never see them again (of course), and they would probably never know what became of me.
That thought DOES trouble me a little, but I think it might be for the best in the end. Not knowing is not a good thing at all, but I think a disappearance suddenly isn't that bad a thing either. All my passwords and such aren't hard to find, and in the cases of my IM programs and email, that information is actually saved within the programs.
I don't think any of my family or friends would go through my MSN/AIM contact lists telling my friends what happened to me, and I don't think that they should. If I had my way, my hard drive would be reformatted on my death, and all my online accounts allowed to expire. Sooner or later, my friends online would get the idea that I was no more.
I've had a few people who I was only in contact with via the internet, whose activity levels dropped from normal to vanished with no transition. Odd thought that it might have been due to their untimely demise ...
"Because Science" is one step from "Because old book". Try "Because of my experiment testing my falsifiable assertion".
Ever visited a website for a movie that had been released 3 or 4 years ago? The sites just sit there on a server somwhere, ignored largely.
I had a friend commit suicide rather suddenly a few years ago. His site is still up at AOL. I can still read messages he posted and see pictures of him here and there on the net. He left quite a digital legacy.
It's truely intersting, the things we leave behind and we don't realize it.
How much of the info stored under your various accounts is actually important if you are dead?
if you are running a business, it is generally a good idea to run it the way you can walk away on a moment notice: pass it to someone or put it up for sale. You should already have it planned and documented.
If you do not have a business and we are talking about random ideas and some IP (code) developed over years - how much of it is actually useful to other people? Unless you are one of those big thinkers with unfinished manuscripts everywhere - not much.
I mean, I'm going to be quite dead.
I have information about all of my various electronic assets and how they should be handled in my will, which has a copy on my computer, a hard copy in my desk, and a hard copy in a safe deposit box. I don't have a whole lot to distribute, except for my life insurance payout, but I have various instructions on where some of my stuff should go, who gets certain books, etc. It's a fairly informal will, but I expect my family will respect my wishes on it, since there aren't multimillion dollar assets to fight over. The copy in my desk is written and signed in my own handwriting, as I understand this is a little more legally binding. It's not a very detailed or complex solution to what to do with the detritus of my life should I drastically change tax status (die), but at 26, I figure an informal solution is pretty good, especially since I have almost no real assets to leave behind.
-1, "1337" speak
...since the last time Slashdot covered this topic.
But in my case, I can say that I have made some inroads in both the living world (insurance mods, finance mods, Living Will conversations and the like) and the after I am gone (in this body anyways) world. The largest step that I have taken in the after I am gone world is to comprehend that as of right this moment at least, I have NOTHING that anyone would really want or need to see as far as data or anything "electronic". Really, all I have done is set up a Safety Deposit box that will eventually hold the Legal papers and insurance docs.
I have a theory that the truth is never told during the nine-to-five hours. -- Hunter S. Thompson
I'm not that concernes about what happens to my data and emails after I die, not much interresting there. What I am thinking about is making a list of email addresses to the people that I'm only corresponding with by email and don't know any of my family/other friends and give to my sisters or something. I have some friends on the other side of the world and I think they should be notified if the inevitably should happen.
Personal Data Cleaners. People could leave a stipulation in their wills that they want PDC to take control of their personal data and control/clean it per the terms set forth at the time of the agreement. When you die, they're notified, show up and do their thing.
...and don't tell anyone anything beforehand, you maintain all rights. :-)
Simple as that...some things you CAN take with you!
There's a line in Coupling about this when Geoff informs Steve's girlfriend that him and Steve are "porn buddies".
---
We spoke for about a half an hour. I don't recall a thing we said. - Colorblind James Experience
Think about it this way:
The computer is a container. It holds the information that is put into it; nothing more, nothing less. If I indicate that my bookshelves are going to my younger brother after my death, does that mean the books are too? If I bequeath him my dresser, does he get the clothes as well? I doubt it.
Information property is tricky business. It takes up little (no) physical space, so it's easy to forget. Instead of simply erasing disks or automatically passing along whatever they contain, computers need to be emptied just like the rooms of a house would be. Then everything needs to be sorted through--it doesn't all automatically go to whoever gets the house.
I don't care about any of the administrivia of my life but I do appreciate reducing it for others.
I might consider a bequest to a useful OS tool. Being immortalized in a geek toy would be worth some money I'd be too dead to spend.
ls
Everybody needs a porn buddy. Upon hearing about your death, said buddy goes to your house, ignores your wife, and proceeds to rip the harddrive out of your computer and leave.
Tools not necessary..
I sure as hell dont.
:)
I mean, I'll be fucking dead. I wont give a crap about anything when I'm DEAD.
Sure, it might be a selfish thing to say. But its the truth.
I don't care what happens with my stuff after I'm dead. I'LL BE DEAD.
no
That's what we call it in our office.
"If I step off the curb tonight, and get hit by a bus, will anyone know what the hell to do with this?" If the answer is "Fuck, no!" then the aformentioned-ill-fated-coworker needs to write it down.
What does it mean to wake out of a dream
and be wearing someone else's shorts?
BNL, Born on a Pirate Ship (1998)
Not to be redundant wasn't this already covered in a Ask Slashdot quite recently? [gasp]Does that mean New York Times ripped off /.?! [/gasp]
I suppose worrying about one's own data is as relevant as to picking the design of one's own casket.
Some aim to please, I aim to tease.
Look, if your Executor has all of the relavant passwords/account numbers for Amazon, Paypal, etc. he or she can act on your behalf and close out the accounts. Presumably they are all linked in some way to regular bank account where they can distribute the money according to your will. How is Paypal going to know the difference between someone who has your login/password and you if its all done electronically?
will be unleashed on the unsuspecting world immediately upon my death!! (evil Professor Chaos laugh here) Seriously, all my personal affects are entrusted to family and they can do w/it as they wish. The only problem periph. is the HP IPaq. It is keyed to my fingerprint so someone will have to press it to my cold hand before I am nuked.
http://ask.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/05/03/20 37245&mode=thread&tid=126&tid=95
Already covered, basically a dupe. I believe this story has risen from the grave.
This leads to the conclusion that eventually, all your data will be reborn in another life and continue on. There's no need to worry what will happen to it.
I've thought about doing this before, too, but haven't actually implemented it. I thought about having on a server somewhere emails that I could pre-write, and upon an untimely (or timely) demise, these emails would be released for delivery. Of course, someone would have to know how to work the system; the solution for this came to me as either having a relative be given knowledge on how to activate such a system, or to have something physical (like the token idea) that would walk the user through. A program that connects to a specific server would work just fine, but there would have to be the guarantee that the server IP won't change. I'll leave the security features up for the Slashdot community to discuss. =)
Proof if proof was ever needed that the mods dont even bother checking the whores links before dishing out the points.
People that are worried about their data posthumously are:
1) Too self-obsessed and too boring to have anything interesting in their data including spreadsheets of the roughage contents in their twice-daily stool analysis, or
2) Have humungous pr0n collections and are afraid of "Joe Average was a dirty pervert" rumours spreading once they're dead.
How about we just kill those people and just see what happens to their data?
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
Wow moderators don't even bother checking the links, there's a suprise :)
Philip
Signatures are broken
... several months ago. He was in a Yahoo group for short story writers. His daughter logged on from his computer and told us he had died. We hadn't known until then.
...I'm really concerned about trying to avoid leaving a lot of expenses for my survivors. If anyone knows how I can bypass the cemetery or crematorium and simply move me and my accounts to /dev/null, please share!
I have also already approached my roomie and my sister about following up with that list for me as a last wish if and when the inevitable should occur.
Buddy, believe me when I tell you this, it's not an if question, it's definately a when question.
We have what's called the "Hit by a bus" file where I work. It's supposed to be a set of sealed envelopes to be opened in the event of an emergency.
Sadly, we had a server die while the Network Admin was on vacation, and we discovered his was blank. Seems he wants to take all our configuration, login and server data to his grave.
And it STILL hasn't been updated
"Live Free or Die." Don't like it? Then keep out of the USA
Or, they happen to already be registered at NYTimes.com so it seems to be a registration-free link.... :-) I do love how it's exactly the same link as given in the story itself, though--that's some balls. :-)
i have written a script that i run of my cron that requires me to enter a password every week.
:)
if i do not enter a password, it sends out custom emails to all my friends, enemies, and loved ones, informing them of my death.
"I am sorry to inform you that has recently died. But thats ok! He's in a better place now
The files he wanted you to have are attached:"
It sends all emails, performs a few DOS attacks on people I didn't like, and launches a worm which pops up a window which say "RIP 1982-" to inform anyone who I may have missed, and then formats my hard drive.
according to yesterdays news. ;-)
"I leave to you, my three thousand seven hundred and ninty three penis extention adverts... and an e-mail fromsome girl I don't know claiming she loves me"
--- [Insert intresting Sig here]
family lawyer? You should fight to your last dying breath to keep your family safe from the evil fire breathing lawyers, not expose them to them!
To my brother, I leave my Yahoo account:
133td00d@yahoo.com
password: URsosexy
I think I'd rather put plans into place to hide my death. Then I want my lawyer to keep track of how long it takes any of my "friends" to actually notice I'm gone. At a later date, he will get them all together (if they will even come) and berate them all with the information. My will shall award him a bonus for each person brought to tears. Then he is to kick them all out empty handed while laughing at them maniacally . He will then award everything to some reasonably intelligent (yet to be defined) low-income person who deserves (also yet to be defined) a break. He can then assume my online identity where it may benefit him as he so chooses.
More likely, it will all go to the government because I'll put off creating a will until I'm already dead.
"A man talking sense to himself is no madder than a man talking nonsense not to himself."
I have explicitely stated in my will that all intellectual property work that I have created which has not been assigned by me to another party (ie any employers who have rights to the work) shall immediatelly be released under an open source license and the ownership of the copyright shall be transfered to the FSF for them to do as they choose.
I have told my relatives about my wishes and the location of my data. I have put passwords in escrow with a close friend.
rm -rf /
I myself have 2030+ posts here, and boiled down, it shows that I was funny, a musician, and angry at how those in power treat those who aren't.
I guess that is about what people will say about me when I'm gone (plus the unavoidable references to my incredible sexual prowess, my stunning good looks, and my amazing plan to save the world with cold fusion).
So, then. Dead people's /. posts?
Hmm, what happens if you write the "Great American Novel" and die before publication? You forgot to put it into your will. It is Intellectual Property, and would be divied up as your jurisdiction decrees.
Same goes for your emails and any other electronic IP. With all the griping about 200 year copyrights (well, only life of author plus 90), you'd think you'd be happy to know your spouse/child would have rights to your email until 2094.
If you're putting together a will, just tell the attorney that you want all miscellaneous IP to go to [NAME]. That should cover any contengencies.
As another poster said, the computer is a container, not a bearer of IP. You can sell the computer without selling the IP contained, the same as you can sell property without conveying the mineral rights or foliage rights (Yes, you can sell your land but keep the trees if you're evil enough).
What those who want activist courts fear is rule by the people.
Saturday Night Live had a skit commercial on that years ago, featuring Will Farrell I believe. It was an insurance service that, upon your death, would swoop into your home and remove any and all "embarrassing" artifacts before your relatives arrived.
They showed the crew hauling out bongs, rather large marital aids, probably an inflatable goat or two from Farrell's apartment. Then a full cleanup to show that, even in death, you were a "good clean boy".
Actually this sounds like a rather lucrative business potential....
...is belonging to you.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
Posted them on Kazaa, DC++, Emule, Limewire, Edonkey, Shareaze, Xolox, WinMX. Along with a picture of myself. WE WILL LIVE FOREVER!!!!!
I made a password list for a customer, that, over time, has grown to 3,849 words. (There is a lot of explanation about how accounts are configured.)
I encrypted that list with an unguessable password that includes punctuation and numbers, using the excellent GnuPG.
I sent the encrypted file by email to every responsible person who works for the customer, including the CEO. I demanded that everyone learn the master password, because otherwise, if something happened to me, they would have problems with their accounts and web site. I also copied the file to their hard drives.
Although I have made several demands in strong language, no one, NO ONE, has bothered to get the master password from me, even though I have suggested it in person to several people several times. So, they have the file, but have no access to it.
The fact is, the new world of computing (okay, not new to me or you) requires a huge cultural change, and the average person has mostly not gone very far in making that change.
The parent was stolen from a previous "Ask Slashdot" on the same topic. This is also made obvious by the fact that the same text is pasted twice.
Not that duping the story says much about the Slashdot editors...
Chickens. Hordes of disease-ridden road-crossing chickens are on the other side. Just waiting.
No thank you. Life is safer on this side of the road.
There are many different digital music resellers that are poping up these days. With DRM comming, one must ask if the music they buy could be passed to their descendants upon their death. For me, this is an issue. I hate the idea of spending $2000 on music throughout my life and not being able to pass it down to generations.
Remember the year 2000? They promised us flying cars. They delivered the PT Cruiser...
I thought about this years ago. I don't really have any important information to impart to my loved ones, but I'm sure it would be helpful for them if they were to know passwords to the home router/firewall, webspace, etc.
Directions to this information are in my safety deposit box at the bank, along with our wills, etc.
Some may laugh, but consider: Why leave hassles with your family (especially technically ignorant ones, like mine)? If they have easy access to these things then they can change or cancel services, modify settings, etc.
Proverbs 21:19
no, but i did ask a friend to delete all my porn if i die, so my mom/kids dont have to
For the easiest method of transferring ownership of anything digital or otherwise I use a "Living Trust". A safe is used to store my documents in typed or witten format (a good locksmith can crack it when needed) and a trusted friend to manage the trust. This way I can die in peace knowing that my loved ones will not be ripped off by the greedy probate process.
Also, it is most offensive to have to send death certificates to total strangers, in order to document that the person you say is dead, really is dead, thereby enabling the company to cancel your whatever-it-is. Believe me, I went through this with dialups and credit card companies. It took months to finally get every branch of every company involved to accept that they were not getting any more money. I have never seen a dead person rack up so many late charges on a credit card. After the company was notified of the death. Go figure!
It is so much better to be over-prepared than under-prepared. Somebody has to clean up the wreckage after you die, and it is much easier to gove that person the tools they need to do the job.
My wife told me about this -- one of our friends is on here. I don't really do lj (my life is chronicled on Usenet!) so I'm not up on the politics, but apparantly people have tried to get people removed from this list, or to have their journals removed after their death, and lj (or somebody else, I don't know) has been unwilling to do so.
This is slashdot...
'nuf said.
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This will really do your employer good. Not. It's not like anyone but you can go down to your safe-deposit box and grab all this stuff... They'll have to wait until probate!
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
Most of us probably don't care about this, only some of us do. I, for one, am fine with letting Yahoo, AOL, etc. cancel my inactive accounts. I also don't need anyone that isn't family or real life friends to know that I kicked the bucket. I don't have any l33t login names or a low ID number to pass on and even if I did, no one would want them. I don't have any secret files that can only be read after I'm dead.
If you're the same as me (and you likely are), then don't be concerned.
Adidas To Bring Back Sneakernet
Fine. At least I get the SUV.
There was a story a few years ago about a service where you could write 'e-mails from the grave' so to speak. You kept a stored list of letters and e-mail addressed to send them to, and for a fee, this service would send the e-mail upon your death. I forget whether it was something that your family authorized (you let them know you had these letters) or what, but it was a neat idea.
Haven't you read this article?
Do any of the major online storage/hosting/email/IM places have sunset provisions, or will they just keep your stuff for as long as they exist?
I'm in the hole of the broadband donut.
There was something in Vinge's True Names and the Opening of the Cyberspace Frontier about this. In the description of Habitat, one of the earlier online MUDs. (Might have been text-based; I don't remember.)
Or, wait, was that characters getting married? Darn it, now I've forgotten.
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
I was upgrading a machine at the weekend and found a cron job that does a chore for my daughter once a year, and then sends her an email "from Dad". Maybe I should do something about that...
Isn't this just a new twist on an old problem -- poorly documented estates?
My dad, for example, has three mortgaged investment properties in Arizona, a motorhome, a car, and a safety deposit box. That I know about. I have no idea what his bank accounts are, what other real estate he might own, what his liabilities are, or what other assets he might have.
Your electronic data is just another element of the poorly documented estate, and probably the least important one, unless you're someone truly interesting and have various letters and correspondence someone else might care about.
I dread dad dying unexpectedly. Not only will it be a personal loss, but it will be a huge PITA to get his estate sorted. Dad had a ton of problems when mom died, and she was his wife and he inhereted all of her stuff by default. At least I know enough to bee-line to the safety deposit box (for which I have a key) and to take out all the gold...
This topic is a lot like What Happens To Your Data When You Die?
Is it that time of year where everyone is thinking about death?, it's spring who cares about death go have some spring geek flings. my 2-cents.
I dunno; I've done a lot of writing over the years. I suppose it falls under your definition of navel-gazing, but the thought of the 1.1MB of journalling I did in my senior year of high school flying into the bit bucket is... distressing. Journals from commoners back in the day provided valuable historic insight. Who knows; maybe some history professor will someday pore over my stuff.
Yeah, I know. Not bloody likely. At least the picture of my navel lint I took for Wikipedia will live on.
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
As a related issue, I've seen very little focus in the computer industry on long term storage. I've got quite a few things that I would like to stay around for 100 or more years (e.g. digital photograps, personal movies), and from what I understand the quality of CD-R has actually gone down in the past few years, to the point where they won't last even as long as 10 years... It'd be interesting to know what people use for long term storage. For me it's basically a _running_ hard drive, and whe it gets old, I'll copy it to a newer one.
Apre Moi, Le Deluge
Wireless Coffin Cam...the best way for a person to be able to post up-to-date personal information after death!
Seriously, seems like the only parties that might be interested in your lifelong data after you die would be creditors looking for owed money.
I happened to have snatched a few good screen names on popular web portals (not here on /., sadly). For example, my Yahoo screen name is routinely hacked (once successfully---thanks to the folks at Yahoo for returning it to me) since it's just my last name and not something annoying like name plus numbers or other annoying cruft.
I've included these screen names along with my estate in my last will for my kids. What'll they do with them? Ignore 'em, most likely. But it's possible they'll auction them off on ebay and maybe earn a few extra bucks off me.
This sort of thing is vital for decrypting your files after your death, or if you are injured and suffer amnesia, or other morbid scenarios in which your data outlives you.
I wonder what'd happen too. There are many people who would never notice it, apart from the lack of reactions to their e-mails to me.
/. some time ago, but the moderator didn't seem to find it very interesting back then.
And what would happen to the open source stuff I wrote? Will someone else take care of it or will it die with me? I tried to post something about this on
I'm very soon to implement a 'dead man switch' for my own use. I do freelance programming work and I have a number of return customers who I'm pretty much always working for, as well as a few customers I provide hosting for.
If I'm ever hit by a bus, or crash a plane or whatever other nasty thing which kills, or severely incapacitates me (coma, etc) I want my clients to know about it so that they can do what is necessary.
My system will simply watch for my login activity..
* if I havn't logged in in a week it will send a reminder email to me every day for the next 3 days
* if I havn't logged in 3 days more it will SMS me a warning every day for 3 days (if I can find a good way to send SMS to my server I'll set it up so I can confirm from my phone just incase I'm not near an internet connection for some reason)
* on the 13th day of inactivity it will email & SMS selected people to ask them to confirm my status to the system
* if my status is confirmed, then emails & SMS will go out to technical contacts to advise of the situation, what they need to do (giving passwords required etc), and who they should contact if they have any problems
NZ Electronics Enthusiasts: Check out my Trade Me Listings
What would be DAMN cool (to me anyway... I love genealogy and personal histories) would be an international, crosslinked, searchable archive of the email of the dead. Oh sure, "porn buddies" would cleanse any submitted material, but it'd be nice to easily read the correspondence of deceased relatives or other personalities of historical interest. The archive would have to subsist on donations and would have to verify all the correspondents are dead, I'm sure, or face being in the middle of a bunch of lawsuits. I suppose IM logs could be included, too.
What do y'all think?
-l
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http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&q= ecmguy&btnG=Search
There was a very respected GM ecm hacker that posted a lot of information on the Engine Control Modules (ie computers) that run GM vehicles.
He passed away, and now that information is almost lost, as he was hosting it on yahoo and geocities, and the accounts have since expired.
Some people have mirrored it, but it's getting hard to find.
Intellectual property is a fallacy, and this entire thread is started over the arrangement of ones and zeros on physical media. You can't own someone's data, you can only own the hard drive it's on. End of story. Everything else is a government created myth.
Fat, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life, son.
Like who I'm going to leave my EQ accounts to? :S
He kept financial records for my dad, and it was very difficult (and in some cases impossible) to reconstruct passwords for some of the accounts.
That was far from the worst part of the "digital legacy" though. There were a couple of online groups he was active with, and every couple of weeks I'd get an email from a friend who hadn't heard the news and have to tell them. It was very, very hard to reply without a great deal of sadness. I'd have rather had every password inaccessible than go through that part of it again.
Probably the best way to deal with that part of it is make your own form letter telling people you like you are no longer there to correspond with. That way family members can cut and paste it in response so they don't have the wound opened up again and again over the next few weeks.
/ Still misses his brother every day.
...Or is this the third article on the topic of "What happens to one's data when one dies"? It looks like the actual article reported is new, so maybe the NYTimes is the one rehasing old stories...I'm just looking for evidence that I'm not crazy here.
> When my partner died, it was a nightmare to get all the dialup services cancelled, etc. etc. Anybody who has a credit card which is automatically billed, that billing goes on regardless - not that dead people have to worry about credit ratings, but it can cost your estate (read, your friends and family) a lot of time and money.
First, while you and yours are alive, make sure each adult has a single credit account for them alone. If you're married, have your husband get a credit card in his name, and get one in only yours. Then, if one or the other person dies, simply close the accounts that are joint. Also, to prevent those companies that continue to bill after an account closes, report all of the cards lost. That shuts down the autodebit pipe tight. Also (and this has security benefits even when you're alive), get one card that will be used only for autodebit stuff, and put all autodebits on that one card. Never use a checking account for this stuff, get a card, and only one. That also simplifies stopping such things upon death.
Virg
Who in the world needs an attorney when there's this free legal service? Plus we all know that slashdot will outlive all of us, so you could even post your will here.
If I am dead I really dont think email is going to be on the top of my issues list. Heck why does a corps need vigra or a home mortgague anyway?
For business related death...
So you work for the mob?
This Like That - fun with words!
business related death
So, there I was rotating logs one day, and suddenly all this crap in the maillog was just too much for me to handl--
-b
myselfmusic
If you are a slashdot editor, just leave behind a script that creates random duplicates of old postings. Nobody will notice that you died. :-)
if and when the inevitable should occur...
Wow, that's optimism for you.
This Like That - fun with words!
It's called a Dead Man's Switch. I believe there was a web-based service that offered this a few years ago. I wonder if they're still around. And, someone's already written another DMS app in response to the NYT article mentioned in this story.
When someone dies, people come out of the woodwork to claim various issues. The dead cannot verify or dispute these claims, so having records (and especially receipts) can help settle arguments that will arise.
Having an email trail may be helpful. Who knows?
Easy enough on recent Macs; boot to target mode, and the Mac's an external FW drive. (NB: this can be disabled by owner.)
Much Unix/Windows stuff gives way to a Knoppix-type boot CD-- about the easiest "parallel installation" possible.
My standard computer B&E tools:
Knoppix Linux-on-CD distro
Two USB/FW drive enclosures with cables (a SCSI enclosure, and USB/SCSI adapter for it, are in my advanced kit).
One 1GB ATA Hard drive, with DOS and a general Clear-CMOS utility. (SCSI version is in my advanced kit.)
Offline NT Password editor floppy.
DOS/Clear-CMOS boot floppy.
One "friggin huge" hard drive for putting retrieved data onto. (The first 5GB is a HFS partition with Mac OSX.3, followed by a 32GB FAT32 partition, with the remaining couple hundred GB also formatted FAT32.)
Screwdriver (Philips/Standard reversible combo)
The advanced kit also includes dual boot Windows/Linux and OS X/Debian laptops; a USB/FW DVD drive; Windows, Mac OS 9&X, Linux, and Solaris-x86 install disks; crossover ethernet and serial cables; a Torx driver set; lockpicks, bolt cutters, a mini-sledge, and a 1-liter flask for the liquid helium-- which needs to be filled shortly before using. (Haven't needed that yet, though.)
Various combinations of these will retrieve from almost anything... but be wary of RAID arrays and encrypted (eg: Windows EFS) folders; inexpert attempts may make the data unretrievable.
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
"And with the economy ramping up, I might have a shot at a new job!"
I think we're ALL looking forward to that shift in the tides. :-)
"It all boils down the the fact that I can't seem to write a decent resume to save my life."
Seriously, check out some resumé services. Short of the "Never Lie" Rule, everything else is just formatting. We devour folks who claim C++ as an area of expertise but who then can't scribble down a simple class on a scrap of paper during the interview.
Here's a useful diatribe on resumés. That Joel guy gets a bit zealous at times, but often has a decent perspective to consider.
Here's another discussion on resumés. Same Joel guy, but it's a forum on his company's site. Just the tip of the proverbial iceberg.
Best of luck!
How do you know you will be important in the future? In particular, the letters of famous authors are often prized for the insight they provide into the mental process behind the work and the life that influenced it. Most important of these letters are the ones written before the author hits it big.
-1, Insensitive Clod
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
Is that when your body is rendered into artificial dairy creamer? :-P
yes, that way my DNA is guaranteed to be recycled through an ever smarter gene pool. As the number of nerds increases the number of cups of coffee increases, the number of teaspoons of Coffee-Mate increases - I WILL LIVE FOREVER!!!!
I've been using usenet since 1988, with an alias since 1997. With google that stuff seems to stick around forever. Some of the comments I wouldnt want my mother to read, but she could if clever enough.
I recall reading some site that snapshot and archive the web, but forgot where these were. I wonder if google archives?
Some people may remember the Macintosh game StuntCopter. When the developer died, his parents released the software into the public domain:
These arcade games were programmed by Duane Blehm. They have all been previously released and are currently offered by most sources of Public Domain software. Duane unexpectedly died a year ago. Cairo ShootOut and Puzz'l required users to send $3.00 to Duane to receive a "Key Code" to unlock all of the features of the program. All of Duane's games contained offers to sell the source code of the programs to programmers who wanted to see how Duane wrote them. Duane's parents have been swamped with Key Code and source code requests that they are unable to supply. These new versions have been altered at the request of Duane's parents. These versions have been unlocked and will allow full access to all of the features. The offers for source code have also been removed. Duane's parents have requested that if you have any of the old versions of Duane's games that you destroy them and replace them with the new versions. Please do not distribute any of the prior versions. Distribution of these new versions is encouraged and requested. Thank You and Have Fun!
May we never see th
This is rather simple for me, I simply have some thermite attached to all stored data devices that interface with a heart monitor. It does quite well burning at over 3000C.
If the combination to a safe is lost or unknown, it still can be opened. It may require a locksmith, several hours of trying combinations brute force, or just plain drilling the safe, but it is possible.
Time locks, I suppose, would make non-destructive methods harder; but if it's important enough, and you can drag in heavy enough equipment, you can drill even a bank vault safe open. Which, by the way, is NOT a random example: one consulting company I worked for was based in a remodeled bank building... which was the root cause of an "unfortunate incident".
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
you're f***ing DEAD man! let them wait a while.
ESR has a Continuity Page for his projects.
"When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro" -- HST
Lets say I die, and I own a copy of Windows XP Professional, and a library of 5000 songs purchased (legally) from iTunes, as well as a bunch of CD's which I've also converted to mp3's.
Who gets the digital media? If my wife doesn't want to keep the computer around, does she have the right to sell the digital songs to at least get some use out of them? Would title automatically pass to her like physical property does? Can she uninstall XP and use it on her own computer? Or is the licence tied to me, and when I expire, the licence expires. Do the CD's have to go with the digital files created from them? Many products today, such as iTunes, seem to be tied to the physical devices the media is located on. If the hard drive crashes and I get a new computer, that reduces the allowable computers for that media, and if you're only allowed one (like with XP) then tough luck, buddy.
Do I have the right to will these things to someone else? When I run off to meet the choir invisible, I want my heirs to be able to access all of the information that I have paid for.
These are assets which over a person's lifetime, can accumulate and become very valuable. Knowing that the media will have a life beyond the life of the current owner is an important question that few seem to have grasped or provided any relevant solutions for.
...if they don't have Internet access?
In this case, we're an independent company, and the passwords are for other things than user passwords, mostly.
Your junk and pron isn't that important to anybody but yourself!!!!
And your porn-buddy.
Porn buddy: When you've died, a friend of yours has a key to your apartment/flat and they get to your place before your family and clean out all of the pornography. You're sad that your friend is gone, but there's a bright side.
(Stolen from the first episode of Coupling.)
Withdrawal before climax is very ineffective and those who try this are usually called "parents."
How come we never see Tony Sopranos sysadmin? Surely the Bada-Bing has a website! Ahh well, Tony would probably smack the guy over the head with a Dell laptop anyhow.
...you took an entirely gratuitous swipe at Microsoft, on the subject of crossing the street.
Genius, pure genius.
Fuckwit.
...that you're being a real dick about it?
If you sent me "several demands in strong language" to learn "an unguessable password that includes punctuation and numbers," I'd come kick your ass.
But that's just me.
1)Create completely random fake tech project which will look interesting to your average slashdot nerd
:-)
2)Compress your important files with apparent project together with a random open source licence
3)Ensure project hosted on a low grade webserver
4)Ensure your friends will email a link to the apparently interesting project to slashdot, so that it appears not long after your demise.
Lay back (well you'd be dead...) as:
1)The story is featured at least twice on slashdot
2)Hundreds of people will make backups aka mirrors
3)Someone creates a bit-torent to ease further sharing
4)The original copy is automagically shutdown
5)People eventually realise that what they've spent ages trying to download wasn't worth it
I'll rig up some sort of device to my heart... when it stops because of any reason at all, my entire network/backups/programmed property will be destroyed. No one will get their hands on my files! Muwhahahaha!
"Instant gratification takes too long." - Carrie Fisher
Perhaps this required a modification to lilo. One of the boot options then becomes "[The User] has died.". From here it will launch a script purging itself of any 'sensitive information", publishing death notices to your blogs (you even get to write the eulogy), sharing all the music / movies / whatever to as manty p2ps as you can (can't get sued if you're dead), and displaying all passwords and locations of important data to the person logging on.
Then you can launch a few DOS attacks agains a few friends (or not friends?!).
I've actually thought about this, I'll create a lockbox that will be only available to my mom after my death, having her execute a script that will backup anything important and destroy the rest, and send out mails and messages to all who know me
This reminds me of a joke that my six year old told me the other day (it's the first joke she's ever told me that qualifies as humour, so I'm allowed to be proud!)
As I remember, six was a happy time of my life too.
Cogito, ergo sig.
Back in the ancient days of Fidonet, there was a local guy who'd been a node since the very early days (mid to late 80's I believe). Sometime in the late 90's he passed away. However, his BBS and Fido node kept running for many months after. This was a testament to the stability of BBSs back in the day as well as the work he did to make things useful on his board. Finally his widow had to shut the board down. He hadn't left his passwd or any of the other bits of info for her to be able to pass the board on to someone. It was interesting that the users of his board didn't know he was gone for quite a wile.
--
If I actually could spell I'd have spelled it right in the first place.
waybackmachine.org has been caching sites for years. hopefully it will exist for eternity and make it easy for someone's data to live forever.
My movie is going to be on constant reruns until the end of computing as we know it.
I've left instructions in my will to take my several years worth of chat logs that ive been saving diligently and use them to train an irc bot, so that even in death I shall continue to chat aimlessly about pr0n and warez.
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is mine.
Here is my plan, to be implemented when I get around to it:
:))
In the event that I do not reset my "dead switch" script, have it do the following things:
- Update my site so there are affiliate & donation systems so I keep making money.
- Continue to post requested updates to my clients website, for more money.
- Have it update crontab to run scripts so that my bills are paid.
- Have my server post "GNAA" posts to Slashdot at random.
- Have it post random articles from Slashdot onto my own website.
- Have it randomly change the CSS file for my website to diffirent colour schemes, so it looks updated.
- Have it update my system with critical security patches regulary.
- Have it log into Yahoo, Aim and MSN at random and talk with my friends.
- Have it arm my alarm system, and call the police in the event it goes off.
- Have it randomly turn lights on & off, so my house looks lived in.
- Have it automatically encrypt my porn archives. (Not delete, don't want to lose them in the event it accidentially goes off.
- Have it randomly log into forums I frequent and post short, ambigous replies.
- Call up some people I really hate, and call them an asshole, at random times in the evening, every day of the week.
- And finally, call into work dead.
That should be about it... I had some more but with my horrible memory forgot them...
ND
This statement is forty-five characters long.
I think we can all admit this whole topic is euphamistic for how do I make absolutely sure no one finds the awful porn on my computer when I die.
ôó
I watched a TV program about the Chernobyl nuclear disaster and found out the root cause of the disaster was money. Apparently, bonus money was on the line, and time was short so they disregarded public safety, and plant saftey, to run the ill-fated safety test.
The results have since become legendary.
Concerning man's preoccupation with monetary wealth, the Bible said it best:
I look at things this way....
It's all His:
and you can't 'take it with you':
Sheesh. Nobody likes my navel. Maybe this means someone's going to post a better picture of it.
I'll wait until I have good navel lint again, and then get a picture take with more flattering lighting.
As if everyone else has pornstar navels...
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca