Japan’s National Consumer Affairs Center on Wednesday suggested citizens start “digital end of life planning” and offered tips on how to do it. The Center’s somewhat maudlin advice is motivated by recent incidents in which citizens struggled to cancel subscriptions their loved ones signed up for before their demise, because they didn’t know their usernames or passwords. The resulting “digital legacy” can be unpleasant to resolve, the agency warns, so suggested four steps to simplify ensure our digital legacies aren’t complicated:
- Ensuring family members can unlock your smartphone or computer in case of emergency;
- Maintain a list of your subscriptions, user IDs and passwords;
- Consider putting those details in a document intended to be made available when your life ends;
- Use a service that allows you to designate someone to have access to your smartphone and other accounts once your time on Earth ends.
The Center suggests now is the time for it to make this suggestion because it is aware of struggles to discover and resolve ongoing expenses after death. With smartphones ubiquitous, the org fears more people will find themselves unable to resolve their loved ones’ digital affairs – and powerless to stop their credit cards being charged for services the departed cannot consume.
This is a symptom of the absolutely insane way digital payments work.
You give a company your card details and they’re able to charge whatever they want, whenever they want, by default. That’s like paying at a restaurant by handing the waiter your entire wallet and telling them to take out the cost of the meal.
Everything made by sufficiently big orgs works like this.
They care about ability to be do everything by themselves and easily.
They don’t care about sanity of the system for the user, because there are crowds of users, what are they going to do, barter?
And the worst part is where the biggest org of all these, the government, makes requirements that can only be fulfilled by big orgs.
You can’t win playing by the rules your opponent sets. EDIT: Unless they do some sort of Ulysses’ pact, but they won’t.
That’s like paying at a restaurant by handing the waiter your entire wallet and telling them to take out the cost of the meal.
Isn’t that basically how it works in the US?
Yes, yes it is. The only deterrent really is the will of the employee to commit fraud and/or a customer noticing. I’ve had to handle coworkers in the past writing in tips on blank tip lines on the reciepts that the customer signed.
Fuck all that. My shit will erase itself if i don’t check in. The family can eat a bag of dicks if they want my data.
This. Why would anyone want their private conversations, out there? Don’t put your password in you will. Put a dead man switch on your PC.
If it is to close down a social media account they can contact the company directly.
If it is to take out money, they can contact the bank directly.
If it is to inform contacts, they can live without knowing.
If it is to cancel subscriptions, you’re going to have to send letters, wait in a phone call for hours, and cancel the credit card either way because of scummy cancellation practices.
Or just give them the passwords to control some things, but not all?
That’s just good advice. Personally, I use a password manager.
Password manager with a delegated access structure is the way to go. If my sister (who I have delegated to) requests access, provides a death certificate,and waits some cool-off period, she gets access to the portions of my password vault I designate. I will grant her access to my financials upon death, but not social media and private stuff.
Versus writing it down and giving it to a lawyer who probably has the same opsec as their 1920s counterpart.
Can you please let us know what password manager does what you said?
You can self host Vaultwarden, which is essentially self managed Bitwarden.
And the feature can be setup fairly easily.
Okay, but if you’re self hosting it, then die, and the hosting has an issue during that time? You’re SOL.
Don’t try to self host things like a dead man switch.
The likelihood that I die, and my loved ones decide to just turn off the server while knowing it’s where the Vaultwarden software lives, before they get access to said Vaultwarden, is very very slim.
Self host whatever you want. Even Deadman switches.
The key is informing your loved ones the requirements for the switch. Just like if they don’t know to request access in other Deadman switches.
