Ask HN: How do you manage your digital legacy for after you die?

Ofc after you die, doesnt matter in the first place, but to be honest, I've been thinking about what my wife would have to deal with digitally when I'm gone. All accounts on the internet, my old pictures in Google Drive, documentation and things like that.

I have password manager, so I pass this to my wife it can be easy to reach the profiles, but what else can I do to help / easier the whole process?

9 points | by orbanlevi 17 hours ago

9 comments

  • raw_anon_1111 8 hours ago
    I am going to say the opposite. There are two classes of digital information for me.

    1. What my wife cares about: mostly financial. My wife is a joint account holder on everything she can be. Thats everything but retirement accounts. She is the beneficiary on those. I send her statements for those every year and we have a shared spreadsheet.

    On the other hand, I think people overestimate how much people will care about your pictures. It’s like no one wants to see your vacation photos. For the ones that she does care about, we just share them.

  • alcazar 17 hours ago
    I set up a Dead Man's Switch. It sends me an email with a link every day. If I click it, I acknowledge that I am alive and nothing happens. If I do not, after a grace period and more reminders, it sends an email to my wife with a password-protected file. I have listed all our accounts, passwords, assets, etc., along with instructions on what to do and whom to ask for help.

    Disclaimer: I sell digital legacy products. However, I also honestly use them, and some of these tools I distribute for free and have made open-source.

    [-]
    • chistev 16 hours ago
      Wow, why every day and not weekly? Every day seems too frequent.
      [-]
      • alcazar 15 hours ago
        I also thought that, but I like it this way. It supports weekly checks as well.
  • sdevonoes 10 hours ago
    Best strategy is to minimise your digital footprint. There are non-negotiable things like: bank accounts, mortgages and the like. Internet accounts, books, pics, videos are all expendable
  • zplb 16 hours ago
    You better watch out for is 2FA, sometimes even with passwords people still get locked out, so backup codes can help.
  • iamdecatalyst 10 hours ago
    I heard someone talking about the Dead Hand system that lowkey sounds as interesting as hell gonna try it out
  • tombelieber 17 hours ago
    I want to know too, mine is using pure iCloud
  • hernanhumana 13 hours ago
    hard disk from the 90s
  • agenexus 5 hours ago
    [dead]
  • tuxnotfound 13 hours ago
    [dead]