You and your passwords – until death do you part?

 Live Science has an interesting video article about the importance of leaving your passwords to someone when you die.  They explain how people everywhere are locked out from the accounts of deceased persons, both personal and professional. It can take up to a year to determine passwords for email, voicemail, and computers holding personal files and photos or work related data such as the accounting software package or legal files.

The folks at Live Science recommend using password holding software, where one master password gives you access to all the others. Or, a more traditional method of writing down the passwords and storing them in a safety deposit box.

However, does privacy still apply after death? I think it may.

Maybe another option would be to entrust someone to destroy all accounts and containing information. Lot’s of folks maintain digital diaries believing they are secure and that the people being written about won’t experience friction or suffer emotional damage. I guess you can have two files, one with the data people can read, and one with data you hope people never read.

The idea of building a password protected time capsule for people to unwrap after I’m gone appeals to me.  Still, I’m not interested in worrying about it too much.  As far as I can tell, most people leave here with a lot of loose ends, and that is the way I think it should be.

For the more conventional, make sure you have a plan to make your passwords available to those who may need them after you’re gone.