Suramya's Blog : Welcome to my crazy life…

October 3, 2006

Dying with your Passwords

Filed under: My Thoughts — Suramya @ 12:50 PM

Interesting post about problems that can be caused when a person dies without sharing their passwords. I have posted about this earlier over here

The main issue I have with sharing passwords is privacy, do I really want people to be able to access my data when I am dead?

Lets say I share my password with someone with instructions to only use it when I am dead, how can I be sure that one they they won’t get bored and start going through my emails/documents… Before you say anything, yes I have a low opinion of everyones honesty (including mine). I wouldn’t want to be the one that someone decides to share a password with.

Another issue is that I change my passwords constantly and at any given time I have ~ 5-6 (Probably more) different passwords in use. I have a hard time memorizing them so I expect others will have a harder time and since no one wants to memorize anymore useless data they will probably write it down somewhere. Now if their system gets compromised my data is also at risk because they wrote the passwords down which is not cool.

One of the solutions people suggested was to use a dead mans switch. Basically in that case if you don’t do something for X no of days your info/password is sent to someone. Its an interesting idea but the problem with this approach is that; what if I don’t log on to the system for X days because I got busy or forgot or was on vacation. It would still send out the data to everyone because I didn’t log on. I guess in the future we can have a device that can monitor a person’s heart beat or brainwaves and then when all activity stops it opens up the information but for now we are stuck with a manual process.

When I am dead people can feel free to go through my documents and most of my computer files. The stuff I don’t mind sharing is already unencrypted but the stuff thats encrypted has been encrypted for a reason. If I wanted to share it, it would have been unencrypted. The same goes for my email. I can think of no reason why someone would want to go through my emails when I am dead and no I don’t think I will get murdered with the one clue to identify the killer in my email.

What are your thoughts about this? Do you have a dead mans switch or something that will open your data to everyone when you die? If so why? If not, are you planning to?

Source: Schneier on Security: Dying with your Passwords

– Suramya

1 Comment »

  1. This site gives the information relating to the brainwaves in the binaural beat secrets. It also gives regarding details about the future we can have a device that can monitor a person’s heart beat or brainwaves and then when all activity stops it opens up the information but for now we are stuck with a manual process.
    brainwaves

    Comment by shiny — March 28, 2007 @ 3:02 PM

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