Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Ask Slashdot: How To Securely Share Passwords?

Posted by timothy on from the one-day-this-will-all-be-yours dept.

THE_WELL_HUNG_OYSTER writes "My tech-savvy father died suddenly and unexpectedly. He did everything online: bill-pay, banking, eBay sales (and other auction sites), PayPal, investing, etc. When he died, he still had online auctions up for sale, items I had no idea how to fulfill when sold. He still had unprocessed auction refunds, people claiming they returned items and are waiting for a refund. Fortunately, he left Gmail open and logged in when he died, so I was able to configure his account to forward to mine for any future emails he received. He even had his health insurance automatically debited from his checking account (who needs health insurance when they're dead?) I had no way to log into these systems to cancel pending transactions. I called every institution; some were willing to help while others required me to fax/mail death certificates and proof of executorship (which I didn't have yet). Meanwhile, auctions were selling for items I had no idea how to fulfill; debits from his checking account were occurring even though they were irrelevant; etc. You get the idea. How can I share my login credentials with my siblings so they don't have to go through this when I'm gone? I change my passwords every month and never use the same password on more than one site. I don't want my siblings to be able to impersonate me unless I'm dead, so publishing a monthly list to them won't help and would be insecure."

3 of 402 comments (clear)

  1. Secret Sharing by betterunixthanunix · · Score: 5, Interesting

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shamir's_Secret_Sharing

    Give shares to relatives and trusted friends.

    --
    Palm trees and 8
  2. Options by Alter_3d · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Check this Wikipedia article
    It contains a list of services you can use to "inherit" your personal info when you die.

  3. There is a service for that by Riceballsan · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Lifehacker recently had an article on a service called "death switch" http://www.deathswitch.com/ Basically it e-mails you asking if you are still alive, if you don't respond back, after 3 e-mails, it sends out the assigned message to who you specified. It does cost $20 a year