Slashdot Mirror
Post-Suicide Account Cracking?
An anonymous reader writes "A good friend of mine had her younger brother apparently commit suicide last week. He was a young, promising CS major who was close to being accepted into a very prestigious school. He was very into Linux as well as PHP/MySQL coding. He left absolutely nothing behind for the family as far as a death note or explanation, and there is some possibility that this was all somehow a tragic accident. The family is in a situation where proof of accidental death would change how this was viewed in terms of paying for parts of the funeral. More importantly, some members of the family are hoping to find something, anything, that might explain why this all went down. Since I'm the most computer-skilled person the family knows, they have asked me if I could help them try to find some information. My possible approaches are: his Linux laptop, his university, Gmail And Hotmail email accounts, and a second MySpace profile that apparently has been tagged as private. How ethical would it be to, say, try to crack his root password in a situation like this? I wouldn't attempt to crack a man's account for his wife because she thinks he is cheating on her, as his life is his own business. In death, would you have the same respect for a person's private thoughts? Secondly, If I contacted places like Google, MSN, the university, and MySpace, what are the odds that they would give me access to any of his accounts? I have links to obituaries and such to prove that he is indeed gone. Would it be a matter of not giving it to me (maybe only to the family), or is this something that they would not do at all? Any opinions on if I should do this and if so, how I should go about it?"
This reads as if it were an attempt by a person working a maters's thesis to determine if a pro-linux, pro-privacy crowd would stick with their principles or instead defer to the humanity of helping a family get over a tagedy. Facinating...
Cogito Ergo Sum
I don't have a good answer to your dilemma. However, it made me think. What is the best way to implement a Dead Man's Switch on personal data (laptop, online accounts etc). I for sure have some stuff that I wouldn't want anyone to see - even if I was dead (I was young and needed the money).
BTW - Am I the only one having problems with the new Reply box? The nifty ajax based "preview post" always hangs and I'm forced to use the old one.
A "simple" court order => Not free
--Sam
My brother committed suicide.
If this is anything like what happened in our case, the family is probably grasping at straws right now. It's not just a financial question -- it's a deeply emotional question. The result of a devastated family looking for some small glimpse of hope; trying to find some way to keep sane.
Many people associate suicide with weakness and a state of permanent depression. Just 'giving up' on life. Families don't want to believe this about their loved ones, and will struggle to find some other way to frame their death.
So -- cracking his accounts is not just about finances. It's very possibly about hope, whether false or not.
The problem is the grief is the same no matter what the reason. The guy is still dead, and the family will still have to go through the grieving process.
I ended up examining the contents of my brother's computer three years after he died. Even then it was difficult to see (for me and my parents), and I did come across stuff I didn't particularly want to know about. I decided not to tell my parents about the stash of photos downloaded off p2p, but I did share the essays and documents he had worked on in his last days.
Legally I believe you have every right if you have the parents permission, but in doing this you have a certain emotional responsibility as well. That's where it gets fuzzy. Do I share everything I find? Do I know what I'm getting myself into? Is evidence of suicide just going to hurt the family more?
It's been four years for me. I've since learned that suicide occurs in cases where one's problems outweigh the facilities to deal with them. That sort of realization along with lots of counseling have helped me. I wish all the best to your friends.
Google also tracks all sorts of web usage statistics for a logged in user, as well as from an IP standpoint. If you can get to the web the way he did you can probably find a lot of information on his previous searching habits, too.
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
I agree. Once someone in the family is formally appointed as his personal representative (whether because that person is named executor in his will or because that person petitions a court under the appropriate laws of your jurisdiction), get a written agreement with the personal representative as to what you are to do and the means you are to employ in doing it. Present a copy of the appointment and the agreement. Nobody is going to let you in based on the URL of an obituary, but with a photocopied court order you have a much better (albeit not 100%) shot.
You may want to get a lawyer involved to further streamline the process.
My old college roommate also committed suicide last year, and I found myself in a similar situation, as the most computer-literate of his friends and family. I didn't think twice about helping his wife and family get into his accounts, his private server, and his email. There was a lot of stuff in there, such as work for his consulting clients, family photos, etc that were important for them to have, and it was good for everyone.
Yes, getting a court order, death certificate, etc can help - but as far as getting into a computer that you've been given by the family (or a privately hosted machine), you should go ahead so long as you have the family's blessing.
his wife and family asked me to get into his Yahoo account and ICQ account. There was a secret answer that either resets the password or reveals the password. This was in 1999 so maybe security has changed. The user sets the secret answer. His was the original middle name of his mother. His family gave me a copy of his birth certificate and I got the answer off of it and got into his account on Yahoo and gave the password to his wife and reset his ICQ password and gave it to his wife as well. We couldn't find anything that triggered the suicide. But on his computer the police found in his web cache that he visited web sites about suicide and got an idea from one of them to use a shotgun on himself. He bought the shotgun, and left a credit card receipt in the box, according to his wife who told me what the police found.
He was a brilliant C++ programmer and I had forwarded emails to him about jobs, and found that a year's worth of job possibilities and recruiter email hadn't been opened up and looked at by him. He just moved it to a different folder. Had he responded to any of them, his chances of finding another job would have been better.
I'd explain more but it is too painful to talk about. There were alcohol and drug related abuses as well in his life. He drank a whole bottle of vodka before killing himself. He ignored phone calls and emails for months, and I couldn't contact him.
Oh yeah if he uses Firefox, there is a reveal passwords option in the tools/options/security/show passwords box. You might be able to see what passwords he used, unless he wiped them out and also cleared his password history.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
I'd suggest something similar. Ask the probate judge to release the computers to a designated consultant, maybe a family friend, who has the technical chops to bypass the passwords (which, as others mention here, is not that big a job) and whose judgment they trust to preserve the decedent's privacy while he digs out anything that might help them.
rj
My daughter was murdered by her ex-boyfriend two years ago. I had recently given her a laptop in preparation for college and after the police were finished inspecting it for clues it was returned to me.
Fortunately she had stayed logged in to her myspace account and I was able to use the "reveal asterisks" hack to reveal her password. That password led to other accounts & email accounts which then led to more passwords.
Eventually I could access everything - to include the killer's accounts. It was very helpful for me to be able to know that my daughter was exactly who I thought she was and at the same time gain insight into the punk that murdered her.
If there is the opportunity to give your friend some closure then I don't feel that a moral dilemma exists. The dead are just that... dead. The ones that are grieving and in pain are the living. If you can do something that may assuage their grief I feel you should.
Just be aware that what might be revealed has the potential to cause more pain - but that's really your friend's decision.
Good luck, and my condolences to your friend.
JAGga.me ----> Producing video games addressing emotional health and wellness issues affecting teens.
Unless there's evidence that a person purposely overdosed on cocaine, the death would probably be ruled "accidental".
I spent a morning on a coroner's jury hearing inquests a while back, and it was kinda interesting.
Here's a description someone wrote up of their experience, and it was pretty similar to how mine went:
http://www.omnux.com/kvandivo/jury/
Another example, which might be more germane to this situation, is Mark Twain. There are works of his that are still unpublished and are not to be published until 2010, 100 years after his death. Toward the end his writings became quite dark and his family held on to some with this request because they didn't want a slew of dark works to change his reputation.
In this case, though, he didn't leave any requests where they could be easily found or with a lawyer. It's possible this guy could have left documents on his computers and we don't have clarification of whether the family has tried to read anything on his computers yet.
I actually had to do this for a family one time. The local police department didn't want anything to do with it -- the young man was in the armed forces and died in his residence due to a drug overdose. His parents knew he had been going through a divorce and wanted closure to make sure it wasn't because of his ex wife. As it turned out, he had been dabbling a lot in illegal drugs (as I found out through discovering lot of emails he had between some friends of his). It had apparently been going on for a while and they were satisfied knowing it wasn't his ex wife that had driven him to do a one-time overdose.
A dead person has no rights. None. All that exists, legally, is the will which the state executes to its best ability. Unless this teenager had a will that said, "All my computers must be destroyed/accounts erased," then what remains of those accounts becomes the property of the parents/guardians. The family can do whatever they want with those items, including asking a stranger to hack the passwords.
The government is not your daddy. Its purpose is not to raid middle-class neighbors' wallets and give it to you.
When did these sites start asking for next of kin? I don't recall giving ANY website that information and I have a lot of accounts.
Doesn't anyone remember this? http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/01/12/1513231&tid=158&tid=215&tid=123&tid=17
The personal property would go to whoever it's willed to or the next of kin if there's no will. That includes the laptop and everything on it.
If he has work related files on his personal computer, those naturally were the employer's property and remain so. In that case, his (now former) employer may appreciate having them. The only way that would happen is if the family accesses the system.
Overall, I'd say if the family wants access to the laptop that is fine to bypass the password unless the deceased left instructions to the contrary. Hacking into myspace, etc is right out, but if the user/pass is stored on the machine OR if they are willing to reset the password under those circumstances, it's certainly OK to help them with that.
Things get tricky from there. Having access to those things may bring comfort and closure. Sometimes though, people find out things that way that they might wish they didn't know. A trusted 3rd party is sometimes a very good thing in those cases.