[plug] What to do with service accounts, payment methods and passwords after your death?

[Dean Bergin]

How important are these services if they are not continued and what would
the impact be if they weren't? If they are critical then probably best to
get them managed by an organisation, incorporate or entity (or partner)
that is made up of a team, so that knowledge and access to the systems to
maintain them is well documented throughout that team or partnership.

That entity could be made up of entirely one person but that brings risk as
you are no doubt aware of.

I hate to say this but once your dead all those are no longer really your
problem. If a customer is concerned about that risk, then they might choose
to outsource the managed services elsewhere or with an entity that has
redundancy in its personel.

Benjamin's idea of deadman switch is in bitwarden is good, but that may be
a paid feature, you would still need a level of documentation to hand over
to any successor, so I guess that brings with it a kind of chicken and egg
scenario. How do they securely access the documentation?

Seems like there isn't much demand for a cost-effective solution to this
sort of problem but a way to mitigate it might be to decouple any service
accounts from personal email addresses and credit cards etc. So that
account recovery and liability to next of kin is reduced.

You might even want to engage with lawyers and or other professionals
especially on minimising liability aspect. That would be my main concern to
not drag family members into potential financial debt carried forward from
such an unfortunate event (death).

I guess that's why things like trusts require at least two directors to
operate...

On Wed, 28 Apr 2021, 13:38 Benjamin, <zorlin at gmail.com> wrote:

> Mostly something like BitWarden with a password distributed by a dead
> man's switch. Or you could use Shamir's Secret Sharing and give keys to
> your wife, lawyer, friend, dog etc.
>
> On Wed, 28 Apr 2021, 13:36 Onno Benschop, <onno at itmaze.com.au> wrote:
>
>> Over the past few years I've been attempting to resolve a problem that is
>> only getting larger. I have countless online accounts, some of which are
>> paid for and linked to credit cards and bank accounts.
>>
>> These accounts are not just "end user" accounts, but things like a domain
>> account, the hosting for a fleet of websites, online photo storage,
>> backups, client data and resources, email, calendaring, media, streaming,
>> etc.
>>
>> What systems have you put in place to ensure continuity?
>>
>> Note that this goes well beyond password sharing, a whole topic in and of
>> itself, this is about how stuff is linked together, what belongs to which
>> account, how is it paid for, etc. etc.
>>
>> I note that even if I were to document this accurately, it would be out
>> of date almost immediately. I created three new accounts for services in
>> the past three hours alone.
>>
>> Feedback and discussion welcome.
>> --
>> Onno Benschop
>>
>> ()/)/)()        ..ASCII for Onno..
>> |>>?            ..EBCDIC for Onno..
>> --- -. -. ---   ..Morse for Onno..
>>
>> If you need to know: "What computer should I buy?" http://goo.gl/spsb66
>>
>> ITmaze   -   ABN: 56 178 057 063   -  ph: 04 1219 8888   -
>> onno at itmaze.com.au
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