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What Happens To Your Data When You Die?
Posted by
simoniker
on Mon May 03, 2004 05:02 PM
from the charon-dot-com dept.
from the charon-dot-com dept.
dacarr writes "Your data - that is, the personal web pages and projects you have worked on to make the 'net a better place - are presumably password protected. But sooner or later the time will come when you take that last breath, and with you goes your passwords, but not your data. It's still there for your benefactors to deal with. And while many famous people who are no longer with us (e.g., Douglas Adams or Chuck Jones) have a staff for this, well, many of us don't. As such, have you planned for the hereafter, and if so, how?"
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Rest In Peace (Score:5, Interesting)
Not that it's relevent to the question at hand, but I never could understand what would cause someone to take their own life. Of course, logically I understand what causes it - complete and utter despair - but emotionally, I guess that I have never (thankfully) felt down enough to empathize with someone who commits suicide. It seems like such a waste. The summer before this he and I had decided to try to get into good shape for the upcoming rugby season, and we pushed each other at the gym and during runs and sprints. After he killed himself, I just had to wonder, what is the point of working so hard to get into good shape and then just ending your life?
Personal anectodes aside, I don't really see much point to this Ask Slashdot question (which is usually the case as Ask Slashdot is the lamest part of Slashdot by far). Your digital files will be treated the same way as your paper files after you die, and people have been dealing with the question of how to ensure that their personal effects are handled in the way that they would want to for thousands of years now. My advice to anyone reading this would I guess be to keep encrypted anything that you don't want anyone to see after you are gone, and for anything else, don't worry about it.
Re:Rest In Peace (Score:5, Funny)
"Dad. Mom. I'm only gonna say this once. For the sake of your children, please encrypt your pr0n. We really don't wanna know."
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Re:Rest In Peace (Score:5, Interesting)
Anyway, yeah. People, encrypt your pr0n. It can be quite nasty. Be nice to the sysadmins.
If it's a close relative, I may just want the stuff on the drive for posterity's sake... But still, it can be tempting to just format the whole drive without looking at anything.
Computers are such personal things. They're like an extension of your mind. Perhaps a little dirty extension of the mind? OK, now we're getting into mixed metaphor land. I think I'll leave it here.
Ahem, just hope my grandfather doesn't read slashdot... Not much danger in that though.
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Re:Rest In Peace (Score:5, Funny)
That's what you think... sonny!
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Re:Rest In Peace (Score:5, Funny)
Good thing I wasn't the one who had to go through his personal effects when he passed.
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Re:Rest In Peace (Score:5, Insightful)
No, they won't be. I have a cousin who's been doing estate law for ~40 years and I've helped him on some extremely difficult cases where clients did not leave their passwords. You're personal affects and papers are accessible, unless you take positive steps you're digital affects probably won't be.
A lot of folks may not want next of kin going through their hard drives, but there probably is stuff on there that an heir or executor will -need-. Give secure storage of these things and continuity of access real thought please.
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Re:Rest In Peace (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:Rest In Peace (Score:5, Informative)
Most of the replies have been anonymous trolls, so I'll give you an actual answer with a name behind it.
I went through four years of clinical depression with suicidal intent. Eventually, you get to the point when all you really remember is pain, and you believe that all you ever will feel is more pain. You have difficulty getting up and out of bed, and if you're not showing up and interacting with people, your previous relationships get shot to hell.
If there's going to be no end to the torment, why not leave it behind?
You can contact me through my site if you have additional questions for a depression survivor. I'll close this with a poem I wrote in the midst of my depression that I think explains things a little more as well.
- Neil Wehneman
**********
Depression Kills
Do not let yourself be lulled into thinking that depression is simply a fancy way of saying that someone is "sad."
Mere sadness does not last for weeks or months or years.
Do not think that people with depression should just "snap out of it."
Don't you think that if we could we would?
And do not think that depression is simply a disease of the mind.
It literally destroys your immune system, depletes your energy, leaving only fatigue, and decimates your ties with friends and family.
Depression is not just an illness.
Depression kills.
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Re:me too (Score:5, Insightful)
Generally there are two types of depression, although you rarely get one without aspects of the other. They also tend to feed off of each other.
The first is clinical depression, which means that chemicals are screwed up in your brain and you need medication. I was on so many different meds over the years until we finally found one that worked.
The second is situational depression, which basically means your life sucks. This can be manifested through physical or emotional abuse or so many other factors. Mine was more situational than chemical, but that's all relative. The chemical aspect alone would have been enough to take me out of life.
I refer to mine as "clinical depression" even though it was more situational just because that forces people to realize that there is a medical aspect to it.
My saying is that "medication gets you stable, counseling gets you fixed." If the meds that you are on aren't working and haven't been for several weeks, SWITCH. Effexor is what finally did it for me, but everyone is different.
Once you get some semblance of stability back, you have to get professional counseling. As my high school girlfriend's mother put it, "it took years for you to get that way, it's going to take years for you to get out." It's true, and you can't do it alone. Get help so you can talk through what has happened to you and get yourself sorted out.
Take care of yourself my friend.
- Neil Wehneman
which a great deal of mine was, and I simply refer to
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Easy... (Score:5, Funny)
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It will take care of itself... (Score:5, Insightful)
That said, I have a little fire safe that I keep important stuff in, like car titles, contracts and cd-rom backups of my computer files. Some of it is sentimental stuff like letters and writing. I imagine if someone decides it is worth publishing, it may live on significantly past my life time. Perhaps none of it will, but I'm not too worried about that, I'm happy that my "important data" lives on in the only place that matters, in the memories of my family and friends.
Basically, usefull and/or popular information has an indefinite life span because people will preserve, expand and share it. Call it the natural selection of information. We don't really need to do anything different to keep that going. Frankly, it's a good thing that useless and unimportant data dies, I'd hate to think that a future historian would be forced to search through petabytes of things like 100 year old Slashdot first-posts in order to find information about our recent war with Iraq.
Re:It will take care of itself... (Score:5, Funny)
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maybe (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:maybe (Score:5, Funny)
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Fire safes- from a locksmith and firefighter (Score:5, Informative)
Document containers consist of two thin layers of steel, which have a hydrated compound stored between them; used to be plaster of Paris, or calcium sulfate hemihydrate (same as gypsum sheetrock). Upon heating, the hydrate gives up its water, flooding the inside of the container with water vapor. This serves two purposes. The first is that the heat of vaporization absorbs large amounts of heat, so the container heats up less rapidly. The second is that the water vapor displaces oxygen, making it less likely that documents will burn- unless, of course, the container fails. Remember- it's just two pieces of sheet steel. A fire safe is not necessarily a burglar-resistant safe, and most of the common safes on the market can be manipulated ("cracked") very easily by even a novice- they're not SUPPOSED to prevent theft. One needs to purchase a UL-rated burglar resistant container for that sort of thing. Safes can combine theft and fire resistance ratings; consult a security professional (like a SAVTA member) for the appropriate safe.
Also important to remember is the location: If a safe is on the 2nd or 3rd floor, once that floor burns through, the container will fall. If it cracks open- there goes your contents. So- put it in the basement. BUT- make sure you don't have heavy objects located above it (refrigerators, etc.), which will crack it open. Put the safe on blocks if you can so that the contents aren't soaked from the firefighters flooding the basement!
Media containers should follow the same general rules (be careful where you put it, etc.), but work on a different principle. Last I checked (it could have changed), media containers use wood as insulation. This keeps the contents at an acceptable temperature, provided everything works. Wood is a great insulator, and it burns relatively slowly unless it is divided in a manner than allows combustion.
None of this means that every fire-rated safe will survive. In fact, a review of areas swept by wildfires in California in... 1991, IIRC, showed that even home-made safes worked as well in some instances as UL-rated containers. However, the best containers were all positioned in the slab, or in some other large, non-combustible heat sink. In-floor safes fare well, although exceptions (such as where the dial melted and dripped into the money stored within, causing most of it to burn) were noted.
So- in short, look for the UL rating. No, the $50 toy safe at the discount store isn't the same as the $500 media vault from a locksmith, even if they ARE both rated. No, the people who sold you the $50 safe will know nothing about how it works, or how well it will protect your data, or how to open it and retrieve your property if your house *does* burn down. No, the $50 safe will not come with a professional who knows how to open your container if something DOES happen to go wrong with it. A professional SAVTA member will be able to help you with all of this, as well as sell you the appropriate container.
But, of course, if you want to try the $50 safe, go right ahead if it helps you sleep better. They have to meet the minimum standards from Underwriter's Labs (UL 72 for Class 125 and Class 150 containers). And it will depend upon where you live (across from a fire station in a Class 1 noncombustible structure, versus Uncle Marty's trailer home, 25 minutes from the nearest volunteer fire department), of course. But for GOD'S SAKE, don't assume that because the label says "FIRE SAFE," that they're all the same, or that they'll save your data no matter what.
Disclaimer: No, I'm not a SAVTA member, and I don't currently work as a locksmith or a safe/vault technician.
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Re:It will take care of itself... (Score:5, Insightful)
A safety deposit box can useful for such things, or even just a friend. He keeps yours, you keep his. The meatspace version of posting it to an ftp site and letting everyone mirror it. Hey, maybe he's got some pr0n you haven't seen yet.
Keeping duplicates of such records in storage is also one of the traditional roles of the family lawyer, if anyone out there is still so quaint as to have one of those. If not maybe you should think about getting one, because he's going to be the guy who takes care of your will.
Papers, passwords (in a sealed envelope to be opened in the event of your death), etc go to your lawyer. You also designate an executor. That's the family member/friend you wish to see carry out the provisions of your will. The executor gets the envelope of passwords and instructions for what to do with them from the lawyer, and carries them out.
It's really all fairly standard stuff. The inclusion of computer files doesn't alter things at all really. People have been dying for years.
KFG
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Re:It will take care of itself... (Score:5, Interesting)
Fire safes are rated to keep the tempature during a a "standard" house fire, under about 300-400 degrees F. However, CD-ROM's are no good after about 150 or so if I remember correctly.
It's a fallicy that a firesafe will save electronic media. I've seen a number of people make that mistake in the "safe my emergency documents" plans. Even worse, the CD-ROM is likely to melt and ruin the paper documents at those temperatures. I'm not sure what will happen, if you want to see, put it all in your oven, turn the temperature up to 300 degrees, let it stay in there for about 10-30 minutes after it gets up to temperature (do this with documents you don't care about, and possibly this could ruin the firerating of the safe, I'm not sure if they are designed to go thru multiple fires). That's like the status you'll get your stuff back in after the fire department lets you back into your house.
My advice, go to a local bank, get a safety deposit box. Put your stuff in there, they only cost about $25/year. In the end, your stuff will be safe, when you die, the executor shows up with the key and a death certificate and your stuff is given to them. The only thing to be cautious of, is that I've been told that vaults can act like big magnets and screw up magnetic media. However, I've never had a chance to test that, and I've never read it from a source I deem "authoratative" to actually trust it.
Kirby
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Re:It will take care of itself... (Score:5, Informative)
The only reliable way to protect your data from fire is have offsite backups.
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Re:It will take care of itself... (Score:5, Insightful)
Wrongo. Example:
When I was eight years old, my mother died. Many years later, I began to wonder what kind of a person my mother was. Oh, I have memories of her, but they are the memories of a child. I know little about what made her a full-dimensional person. What her politics were, for example. Or what kind of music she liked, etc.
My mother was a prolific letter-writer. She was from a fairly poor family, and considered a long-distance phone call a luxury to be reserved for birthdays and holidays. Consequently, she wrote many letters to her mother, even up until her last days. Unfortunately, few of her letters survived her. My sisters and I eventually found ten or twenty of them, but I would give anything if her mother and my father had kept more of the letters.
Yes, nobody will probably care about your extensive pr0n collection, or that flamefest you got sucked into on comp.windows.lusers, but much of the data that you consider to unimportant now might become priceless after you're gone... at least to the people who care about you.
So save your e-mail (not the SPAM). Keep backups of your weblogs. Hell, make hardcopies and save them in a notebook. These things say more about you than you might realize, and somebody might someday be glad you kept them.
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Re:It will take care of itself... (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:It will take care of itself... (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:It will take care of itself... (Score:5, Funny)
Scotty will find a way.
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How about... (Score:4, Insightful)
yeah, it is a kinda weird situation (Score:5, Interesting)
http://perazzoli.org/blog.php
Re:yeah, it is a kinda weird situation (Score:5, Interesting)
How ironic. The first line of the last post on the main page announces "Life goes on."
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Simple (Score:5, Funny)
Sooner or later they will discover a vulnerability.
Re:Simple (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Simple (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Simple (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Simple (Score:5, Funny)
chimpo13 - annoyed
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Re:Simple (Score:5, Funny)
<p>
Liar. Spaces aren't allowed in passwords.
<p>
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Find a porn erase buddy! Seriously....... (Score:5, Insightful)
Timothy Leary [leary.com] is another good example of dedicated fans who keep the site running after he died and an even better example is Peter McWilliams [mcwilliams.com] who put the entire text of all of his books online before he passed on. I recommend Ain't Nobody's Business if You Do. The Absurdity of Consensual Crimes in a Free Country [mcwilliams.com].
Frankly as far as data and death are concerned most of you
A definition (Score:5, Funny)
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Wills are great (Score:5, Insightful)
Always be prepared (Score:5, Interesting)
Work vs Personal (Score:5, Interesting)
I have a copy of the current server layout, (well, almost current) and ALL of the pertinent passwords WRITTEN DOWN, and kept in a safe. (Right next to the backup drives) My friend who covers for me when I'm on vacation is well known to my co-workers, and boss.
So... if I kick the bucket, there will be a way for everyone else to pick up the pieces, continute business and move on with life.
Now at home, it's a sticky wicket... I currently don't have anything up on our web site, so that's not a big deal. My wife gets to decide what to do... and I need to talk with her about this issue.
For me, the big question then is what becomes of my 80,000+ photos? I've got some good ones, that I even managed to sell. I'd hate for them to just get pitched. (Thus returning to the main question)
Odds are, if she wanted to, she could back all of my stuff onto a new spiffy $200 drive (200Gb now, and twice as much 15 months from now). I'm probably about to do something like this to save my late father-in-law's data.
Gruesome topic, but it's good to plan ahead.
--Mike--
I'm Immortal, so far
Service related to this (Score:5, Interesting)
software (Score:5, Interesting)
Heck, if you are really good you can write the program to simulate your daily digital life. In effect making it so people who only know you on the net think you are alive. He died on thursday? I IMed him on friday and he posted to
Oh, just so you know, I'm actually dead and this is a program I wrote that is posting to slashdot. ph33r!!!!
Put them in your will (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't put them in your will. (Score:5, Informative)
Second, most states require that original wills be lodged with the court within a certain amount of time after your date of death. Your will would then be accessable to the public (for example, you can buy a certified copy of George Washington's will, if you want one).
Third if you're paranoid, telling the lawyer your passwords and have them kept for safekeeping by some other means would result in a situation where the lawyer's staff would probably have access to your passwords, even while you're still alive.
What I think we have here is a business opportunity. A company can maintain a completely off-line registry of passwords in envelopes that aren't even opened by the company that are turned over only after your executor delivers your death certificate to the company. I'm operating under the assumption that any on-line registry of passwords is simply insane and cannot be truly secure under any circumstances.
Of course, this company already exists: It's your bank. Just write down your passwords, put them in sealed envelopes, and put the envelopes in a bank safe deposit box. If the box is titled solely in your name, no one would have access to it except for your conservator (if you get put into a conservatorship), your agent under a power of attorney, or your executor/trustee after your death.
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Death Certificate (Score:5, Informative)
what happens to my data when I die? (Score:5, Funny)
Store passwords with your will (Score:5, Interesting)
Ideally, I'd like to have a method for cleaning up certain things. There are probably files I wouldn't want others to see, in addition to files I *do* want them to see, but only after my death. Might be interesting to write a script that they would be told to execute, that would clean stuff up and print out my will. Of course, I'd have to put in protections to keep it from being run before my death....
I did some work on this a while back, dealing with splitting up passwords among N people such that any M people could recover the password (MN, of course). That way they all have to agree I'm dead, which prevents cheating.
You don't have to be dead... (Score:5, Interesting)
Here's a hypothetical situation -- you keep all your finances (check register, bank balances, etc) in Quicken/M$FT Money/et al, as well as policy numbers, loan payment schedules, yada yada yada.
Your home directory is encrypted (via something like Mac OS X's FileVault) when stored, and decrypted only upon a successful login.
You're in a car wreck and are comatose for 6 months.
During that time, your car is repo'ed, your home is put up for sale due to lack of property tax payments (I think there are probably things to protect one from the mortgagor, but not from your friendly local gummint) -- you get the idea.
It's a good idea to have someone you trust (Fox Mulder notwithstanding) know how to get in and manage things in your absence.
If you're fortunate enough to have TWO people you trust (or almost trust), you might devise some sort of digital equivalent (this IS Slashdot, right?) of the old "2 halves of a dollar bill" key used in the movies. It would seem like a variant of the RSA scheme would work nicely. Maybe a large number that is the product of two (or as many trusted folk as you have) large primes could be the key to your digital castle...
Otherwise, recovering from a coma could be one of the most unpleasant surprises you'll ever have.
Not a bad idea to let someone else in (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Dead man's handle (Score:5, Informative)
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With apologies to Mr. Cobaine (Score:5, Funny)
They don't go to heaven where the angels fly.
They go to a folder of
Won't see em again 'till 2038.
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Re:With apologies to Mr. Cobaine (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:My solution (Score:5, Funny)
You know.. I just had this really weird vision of a medical examiner removing a glass vial from your windpipe.
"Cause of death? He choked on his passwords.."
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Information Theoretic Death (Score:5, Interesting)
Your brain is information.
The degree of information retrieval from a frozen brain is dependent upon the sophistication of the information retrieval technology. Same as retrieving information from a shattered hard drive. It can be done, but you need some good equipment.
Cryonics DOES preserve information, but is it enough for revival?
Well, how much information is preserved depends not so much on the cryopreserative technology used today, but instead on how sophisticated is the information retrieval technology of the future.
But "the future" when it comes to reviving a frozen cryo, is NOT set. If the information retrieval technology at year N is not sufficient to revive, then wait K years.
So, I hope you see that the odds are quite possibly good that there will exist some year N + m*K years from today in which the information retrieval technology is sufficiently sophisticated.
So, in retrospect, destroying information LONGTERM is actually difficult.
For more information on Information Theoretic Death, see Ralph Merkle here [merkle.com] and here [merkle.com] and here [merkle.com].
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