Never Write Your Passwords Down…Except…
Tim Fuell, 29/07/2010, posted in "Analysis"
Tim Fuell only joined the Webfusion team earlier this year but having been a customer of the group for more than ten years, he knew all about their success ...more info
Tim Fuell only joined the Webfusion team earlier this year but having been a customer of the group for more than ten years, he knew all about their success in the Web hosting field. After writing his Masters thesis on the threat of cybersquatting way back in 1998, he has seen the Internet grow beyond even his wildest dreams. A journalist for over sixteen years and a qualified Solicitor, Tim is one of a team of bloggers in the Webfusion stable aiming to educate, inform and assist their online readership. ...less info
Our lives are run in an every increasing online way. I won’t say there is nothing you can’t do online because there is always someone willing to prove me wrong, but in most situations whatever the physical world offers, the virtual world has a version and usually cheaper.
This means more and more people moving towards conducting business and personal affairs online and with that comes potential difficulties. Have a think. Just off the top of your head how many sites, logins, apps, etc do you have a password for? We are told to never write those down, not to use the same password more than once and might even be forced to change them on a regular basis.
For even the brightest minds remembering them all is tough. So come the time you meet your maker you may have hundreds of them all stored in your head. Your death then will not only be fatal to you – sorry, that’s just a given – but also to any business, projects or general affairs being conducted online when it’s your time to go.
If nobody else knows those passwords, access to any online information is likely to be impossible. Where once grieving families sorted through shoe boxes of bills and papers, many are now left staring at blank screens trying to ‘hack’ online systems, trying passwords you may have used. Bank accounts, memberships, even diaries, could all be online with no way of surviving friends and relatives accessing them or updating them. Indeed, many ‘assets’ may have only ever been dealt with online and without a real paper-trail, your nearest and dearest might never even know they exist.
It could be weeks after your death that some Facebook friends find out about your demise (perhaps only realising after posting a ‘how are you?’ on your wall and being met with derisory responses by your friends.) What too of your funeral? It’s nice to think that a throng of friends might there to see you off but hang on, you no longer have a traditional paper address book. All your contacts are on your phone, locked by a password! Perhaps relatives could email them? No, you sensibly password protected your laptop and anyway you never saved your POP3 login password automatically – just to be safe.
The password is a great tool when you are alive, but upon death they can prove a massive headache for executors, family and friends.
So, what can you do? Well if you haven’t already made your will, get that organised. This isn’t the place to discuss why but it is the most important thing you will ever do. Then password issues can be covered in that will or documents associated with it. To help executors of your will, some lawyers advise you leave a memorandum with your will that includes all the details of your online accounts. In reality, things change so often – including the passwords – that there is a good chance this would be out of date anyway come the day it was needed. A memorandum wouldn’t be part of your will so could be updated and changed as often as you like without legal advice but in a busy world many would forget to update it.
The alternative and a useful option for both living and dead, is to use a password safe program. Open Source KeePass and online Passwordsafe are just two of a growing number of options to store all your passwords safely in an encrypted environment. They are probably easier to keep updated and you just need to leave instructions with your will of the one master password so your executors can obtain access to all your other ones. They are also a helpful tool to use when you are still alive. If using an online resource or free download for this information worries you, you could do the same with a password enabled master document on your machine, although remember the encryption is unlikely to be as secure.
It isn’t the most cheery of subjects, but the need to consider what happens to your passwords when you die is becoming an ever important issue. Your demise will be traumatic enough for those mourning your loss and it is better to be remembered as the person who was organised to cover this password issue than the one people grumble about for ‘doing everything online’. It’s worth thinking about.
Have you put any arrangements in place for your passwords when you die?
Subscribe via RSS or via email
