What happens to your passwords when you die?

Question

I&rsquo;ve been looking into setting up a will and a way to pass down accounts and passwords, but I&rsquo;m not sure what the best way to handle that is.Has anyone set up anything like this before?

gervwyk · Accepted Answer

LastPass has a very nice solution.. You invite your next of kins with a emergency access token email. Then when something bad happens to you they can request to gain access to your passwords. You then have something like 7 days to respond and deny the requests in an event where you need to block it, if the period lapses LastPass will share the password vault with your assigned next of kin. Been using LastPass for years now and its great!

BjoernKW · Answer

1Password emergency kits are a way of achieving this.
They allow you to provide a third party with all the details they need to access your passwords. It's therefore highly recommended to keep these kits at a safe location only trusted parties can access in case of an emergency.
You can also opt to keep your master password in a separate location or with a separate party, which precludes a single party from gaining access outright.
One could even envision combining it with something like Google's Inactive Account Manager (https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/3036546?hl=en ) to implement a dead man's switch by having an email sent on your behalf after a set period of inactivity.
I wouldn't want to trust them with my master password in plain text, though, which would defeat the purpose.

duxup · Answer

Google has a google specific "Inactive Account Manager":
https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/3036546?hl=en
It allows you to setup access to your account if you've been in active for a while, presumably that could eventually happens ... sometime after you die.
I started setting it up but when faced with writing an email that probably only gets sent when I'm dead to my wife / kids ... I kinda didn't want to keep going.
There is also a delete option.

afarrell · Answer

A former colleague of mind is building a solution to this:https://onceivegone.com/

mrdazm · Answer

This line of thinking is exactly what got me down the path of building out Passbox fwiw.https://passbox.co

pesfandiar · Answer

IANAL. What kind of accounts? If you're talking about accounts that contain any assets (e.g. bank, brokerage, e-commerce, ...), there shouldn't be a need to have a password for your estate to access them. Other than that, did you mean accounts that contain non-public information, or did you want to pass down the control of -say- your social media accounts to your folks?

Maha-pudma · Answer

Keepass vault on computer and copy on usb which wife is aware of. Master password with lawyer with instructions on where to find key file and how to use.No third party to deal with.

moxylush · Answer

I Keep a last will and testament, and all legacy credentials on an Arcanus 55 keypad encrypted USB device. My Family and lawyer have the PIN.

What happens to your passwords when you die?

I’ve been looking into setting up a will and a way to pass down accounts and passwords, but I’m not sure what the best way to handle that is.
Has anyone set up anything like this before?

A former colleague of mind is building a solution to this:
https://onceivegone.com/

This line of thinking is exactly what got me down the path of building out Passbox fwiw.
https://passbox.co

Keepass vault on computer and copy on usb which wife is aware of. Master password with lawyer with instructions on where to find key file and how to use.
No third party to deal with.

I Keep a last will and testament, and all legacy credentials on an Arcanus 55 keypad encrypted USB device. My Family and lawyer have the PIN.