
What happens to your emails after you die - simonpure
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-03/this-is-what-happens-to-your-emails-after-you-die
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LannisterDebt
Self plug for my dead man's switch:
[https://absentplan.com/](https://absentplan.com/)

You can configure it to do anything including scan your social media for signs
of life, cURL your own servers, and send out text/emails with attachments.
Uses client side encryption if desired, or just give us your own self
encrypted files.

~~~
chillwaves
An endorsement from their about page:

This is not the type of thing you'd want to entrust with "Big Tech" who can't
seem to resist spying on you. -Cyber Security Expert

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LinuxBender
Set up a legal trust, transfer (if transferable) your accounts to family
members. If you know this is not supported, put your login info and MFA
devices in a lock-box for them to inherit. Prepay your accounts, as your CC
will get suspended. Those with full power of attorney should be able to
legally access your accounts. Executors and primary beneficiaries named to
have your accounts. Double check with an attorney in your location as some
places have silly laws. I am not a lawyer, thankfully.

I have cron jobs set up on pre-paid servers so that should something happen to
me, my friends will get emails from me as I don't entirely trust the trusties
to do what they are obligated to do.

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solstice
What do these cron jobs check for?

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Alupis
It's probably one of those "dead-man-switches", where if OP doesn't do some
action before the timer goes off, then it fires off those notifications to his
friends (in this case).

So OP has to regularly do some action until they can't (either aren't able to,
or are dead in this case).

~~~
me_me_me
The easiest thing i can think of is:

Touch a file on login.

Cron checks if file is X days/months/years old. Also I would add two offset.
First triggers earlier with reminder to self (taking extra long holidays while
forgetting about cronjob), second is actual dead-man-switch when you are
probably incapacitated or dead.

~~~
Razengan
Couldn’t that be exploited by holding the person hostage, making their dead-
man’s-switches fire while they’re alive?

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nkrisc
Yeah, sure, if they know about it at all. Also consider your threat model: are
you worried your family will kidnap you to get access to your accounts? If you
think they would, maybe you need a different plan. I mean otherwise, if
they've got you kidnapped anyway, they could just beat the password out of
you.

~~~
bryanrasmussen
If they beat the password out of you, you give the bad password that causes
email to be sent to police telling them who is holding you hostage.

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TedDoesntTalk
When a parent of mine died, I accessed their computer (not password
protected). It was still powered on and logged into gmail, facebook, and
various other sites. I simply changed the passwords and wrote them down (I
also had access to the cell phone in cases where 2FA was used -- but that was
rare in my parent's case). Now many years later, I still have access. The
sites have no idea that user is deceased and I have no intention of notifying
them. I don't actively use the accounts, but log into them when I'm feeling
nostalgic.

~~~
the_af
Do you mean you didn't know the original passwords? Many services (like GitHub
and I think Gmail) don't let you change your password without typing the old
password first. This becomes a problem if you forget your Gmail password, even
though you're still logged in.

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Razengan
Sort of related, I’d love a service or option that makes your git repos public
after you die. Like unfinished projects or ideas you never got to work on etc.

~~~
m463
It would be interesting.

You could GPL a bunch of code (doing this legal step when you are alive), give
it to an escrow service and let them distribute it when you die.

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lightwin
In my case Verizon (Yahoo) deleted my whole email inbox while I am still
alive... who cares when we die... these companies think we users are just
sheep.

~~~
LeoTinnitus
I've been trying to delete my Yahoo account for years. I can't because they
require me to log in to my secondary email...which they deleted...

~~~
lightwin
Well, don't login to it for one year and poof.

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andrewfromx
how do you program anything to have a "fire if human is dead" logic? By
definition it will accidentally fire sometimes when the human isn't actually
dead and then, ugh, so embarrassing having to tell everyone you are still
alive.

~~~
clort
So make it more complex and have it "fire if human is not in touch" then. Have
it give some level of notification that there is a problem needing human
attention and that if possible, they should get in touch with you. You could
give out keys to a secret (see: Shamirs Secret Sharing) so that if a few
people got together then they could find out more but don't tell them who the
others are (if they are likely to be at your memorial they will find each
other). Give out secrets in sequence so that the longer it goes on, the more
people get involved - tell the later ones who the earlier ones are. I guess it
doesn't have to be all-or-nothing on the first day the software misses you?

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znhll
Not my project but I've looked into this kind of thing for a few months now,
and I really like [https://hereditas.app/](https://hereditas.app/)

It's open-source!

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mrdazm
I’m actually building Passbox ([https://passbox.co](https://passbox.co)) to
help with this

