Slashdot Mirror
Dead? Hope You Left Someone Your Passwords
A reader writes "Looks like if you die, Yahoo won't grant access to family members. I know I've enjoyed reading my grandfather's letters from WWII, this could be a huge loss of history if other ISP's have the same policy." MJK points out that Slashdot has explored the notion of what happens to your data after you die.
My family members are welcome to keep all the emails I've sent them. But my personal mail? That'd incriminate way too many people still living...
don't keep anything you want to pass on stored on Yahoo! Next problem?
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
yet another reason to make your passwords the names of your children!
2 1337 4 u!
This is slashdot, you can trust us.
My data is my data, and unless I stated otherwise in my will, it dies with me.
Also, if my relatives would have something to see in my email, I would let them read it.
After all the reason you use the yahoo mail is privacy.
Why should my privacy die with me ? (sounds funny, though)
I think keeping the contents private is prudent.
It is up to you to archive your emails and other e-stuff in a a spot that it can be found, if indeed you really want it found after you are "gone".
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
When I die, I wouldn't want any one to find my pr0n. Someone needs to create encrypted mpeg/divx.
Or maybe I should request that I be buried with it to take to the afterlife. "Please bury me with the harddrive with the folder name 'Stuff'".
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
Plus think of the flaming possibilities. You could instruct your surviving loved ones to flame as much as you want, knowing full well no one can touch you in return (unless you believe you are experiencing literal flaming after death, but that's just the risk flamers take).
Seriously, put it in your will if it's important enough.
Grandma: Oh my god, how many emails about viagra did he have?
Ohhh, I better contact this poor Mr. Mbutu and see if I can help him out. I didn't realize pop had friends in Nigeria.
Look at all these money making schemes? How come I never saw any of this money?
Oh dear, I had no idea pop was into asian porn...
My my, it looks like pop was corresponding with someone about Vicodin.
Perhaps its better he died...
hehe i agree, i can just imagine my tombstone reading "R.I.P -1 troll"
Did he provide a copy of the death certificate? How do you know who it was or wasn't?
What you did was wrong, and if it wasn't illegal, it should be.
If you didn't want it on your concience, you should've passed the call up the chain of command to someone with more integrity.
how do you tell it that you're dead when you're, well, dead?
I wrote a little program called dead man switch years ago, for just this purpose (and to teach myself Java). I imagine this is someone else's though since I only gave mine to a few friends. Mine just required that you log in to the server once every [variable] days. If you failed to log in it would optionally send a warning e-mail and then it would mail out a predefined message to a predefined address. I planned to expand it to include setting up accounts and storing files encrypted, but never got to it. I figured all those movies where people say, "If I die my computer will automatically send the files to the police" would be more true to life if there was such an app lying around to make it easy. (cron, yes, I know)
My guess is that like my program, and like a real dead man switch, it takes a conscious effort to keep the switch from being tripped.
When my best friend died in a tragic hiking accident, I spent about 30 hours trying to hack his hotmail account for his family- after they found out that Hotmail was not going to give it up for us. I never did get in.
I've been heavily into the MMORPG scene over the last few years, and some of my closest friends are folks that I don't have any other contact with. If one of them was to get hit by a bus, I'd never know what happened. That would be odd. I suppose that from my side of the monitor it would be exactly the same as if they had suddenly quit playing the game and never contacted me again. That's an odd concept.
I keep forgetting my place. Jesus is for losers. Why do I still play to the crowd?
I support Yahoo's stance in this matter. While he's dead and really doesn't have a care in the world, because nothing about him besides a pile of flesh exists..
Out of respect, what if there were things he never wanted them to know? What if he was gay and having an internet relationship with some man, and his parents were anti-gay? They would then be left thinking they never knew their own son, and all of this crap.
If you want people to have access to that sort of thing, leave them access. Put your passwords in a safe or something if you MUST write them down.
Yahoo and others should not be giving access to an individuals person email, dead or alive. I don't care if the family presents a death certificate or not. You should have a reasonable expectation of privacy and deceny even after death. Let your personal life die with you.
And that's the moment when danheskett and taustin figured out they were friends in RL. "Dude, you're on /.!"
Why are there only 19 people folding@home for slashdot?
My password is my cat's name (x6>B8e@7w_4). I rename it every 30 days.
#!
Nah, your tombstone would read: "Netcraft confirms it, Cynikal is dead".
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
The email or other electronic records are property just as paper letters are. By default, you don't have privacy in death as your paper letters are inherited by someone unless you leave provisions in your will for them to be destroyed. If you are a famous person, your person letters are likely valuable property.
I don't see why email should be considered any different. Yahoo's position really is that your email is not personal property. They "own" in the sense of controlling the property while it's on their servers. I don't think Yahoo's objection is really about privacy. They don't want your email to be considered property because they could then be sued when they accidently lose it, not to mention the administrative costs of dealing with probate transfers. If this was really about privacy, they could give make the disposition at death user controllable when the account is created.
I doubt this issue will be fully decided by the courts until some famous author dies and the only copy of their unpublished work in on some server somewhere and worth a lot money. Then the family will sue for access to the valuable property which they've rightly inherited through the will and the courts will be forced to decide whether ISPs can destroy property on somebody's death.
That's amazing, I have the same combination on my luggage!
Prepare to open the shield, and change the combination on my luggage!
in bed.
I am not sure I agree with this. If I really want people to have access to things I will make sure they can.
A company like Yahoo cannot simply relinquish the login info just because you would like to have access to.
It might be your desire to know everything about that person, but in essence it is their call to make sure that you have access to it. Put it in their will or find another way, but you don't have a (legal, and moral is debatable) right to see those informations.
Yes, it sucks to lose someone and it is understandable that you want to have as much as you can, but at the end of the day shouldn't you respect the way they have lived, secrets and all?
If you want to e-mail me, use my PGP Key.