[HN Gopher] What happens to your online accounts when you die?
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What happens to your online accounts when you die?
Author : bobbiechen
Score : 149 points
Date : 2025-02-09 15:09 UTC (4 days ago)
(HTM) web link (digitalseams.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (digitalseams.com)
| e40 wrote:
| My son gets my 1pw master password and yubikey and inherits all
| my online accounts.
| WillAdams wrote:
| That is my plan as well --- there's an envelope in the safe
| which has my e-mail password which should allow taking over the
| accounts, and maintain access to my GOG.com game library, my
| Amazon Kindle books, and my Amazon Music --- curious if there
| will be any case law in-between now and then.
| account42 wrote:
| For GOG the safer solution would be to download and backup
| the offline installers. Might even become useful in your own
| lifetime.
| failrate wrote:
| My Steam friends list is slowly turning into a memorial.
| asynchronousx wrote:
| Damn that's sad.
| bobbiechen wrote:
| I'm sorry to hear that.
|
| On the topic of Steam, according to their terms of service, you
| buy non-transferable licenses for access, and they will argue
| you can't inherit the games of a deceased person:
| https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2024/05/after-you-die-your-st...
| . This follows a tradition of digital media providers asserting
| deep control over things that you might think you "own" :
| https://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/18/technology/companies/18am...
|
| (I had a hard time fitting this thread into the blog post and
| eventually cut it)
| Dalewyn wrote:
| At the risk of possibly sounding crass, the practical
| solution is to simply never tell them of the decedent's
| passing.
|
| Unless the matter of concern is a legal or financial one (eg:
| bank accounts, pensions, insurance, etc.), quite literally
| nothing and nobody else requires knowledge that the account
| holder passed away.
|
| Never tell Valve that your gamer dad passed away and they
| will be none the wiser and noone will have any problems as
| you "inherit" his account and its associated games. You're
| not trying to defraud Social Security as a 150 year old,
| after all (...right?).
| account42 wrote:
| This might work for the first generation of steam users for
| now, but eventually they might require some kind of
| verification for old Steam accounts. Also remember that
| Steam is providing two things - a license for the games and
| a service to download them. I wouldn't expect a court to
| agree that a relatively low one-time fee obliges Steam to
| provide your or your heirs a service in perpetuity.
|
| Why take the chance for games that you can get DRM-free and
| transfer independently from some live service.
| polski-g wrote:
| Yes that is a claim they have made, but unless they show up
| in probate court to defend that position, they will do what
| the judge orders them to in a default judgement.
| RandomBacon wrote:
| Have you gotten a probate court to order Steam to transfer
| games, which they then followed?
| polski-g wrote:
| I am still alive, so no, I have not.
| RandomBacon wrote:
| Hopefully your family won't have to test it for a long
| time then :-)
|
| Please don't state something as a matter-of-fact if you
| don't know it to be true but just merely believe it to be
| true. Otherwise please link to an instance where a
| probate court has ordered it with a successful outcome.
|
| It seems like a novel idea and I hope someone tries it
| and posts about it.
| fakedang wrote:
| Oddly in the same boat.
| amatecha wrote:
| Sadly true. I don't scroll through the offline friends because
| sometimes I don't want a reminder of THAT many people who I can
| no longer message or play games with. One old friend, him
| having not responded about the game key I sent him on Steam was
| how I started to wonder, searched his name, and found his
| obituary :(
| RataNova wrote:
| It's weird how something as simple as a friends list can turn
| into a memorial over time
| hlehmann wrote:
| My brother passed a few years ago. I was able to "memorialize"
| his Facebook account, or whatever they call that term. Found a
| link on their web site, uploaded a scanned copy of the death
| certificate, and within a day or so the title to his page was
| changed to something like "Remembering Joe Blow..." People could
| still post on his page, but nobody could log in under his name
| (just in case his account got hacked or something). It was pretty
| easy to do.
| 800xl wrote:
| My mother recently passed away after a long battle with
| dementia. Apparently when she would forget an account existed
| or she could not log in she would create another account. She
| had multiple email addresses and Facebook profiles that I know
| of.
|
| I've been able to get Facebook to close a couple of her
| profiles but for the rest they keep asking for the same
| documentation over and over again (death certificate and
| funeral booklet) but will not take any action.
| telesilla wrote:
| Wouldn't it be fairly easy to fake a certificate? I wonder what
| process they have in place to avoid false flagging.
| aeonik wrote:
| Yeah, and Facebook is the least of your concerns.
|
| Defcon talk about the security of death certificates, and
| what happens to your life if you are targeted by this attack.
|
| https://youtu.be/9FdHq3WfJgs?si=gZ0f0ZmWSKlmCd1j
| FpUser wrote:
| All will go to my daughter
| snowwrestler wrote:
| Been working through the accounts of a deceased family member
| over the past few years. They left a password file that made its
| way to me so I'm able to log in to most things "as them." My goal
| is to harvest anything the family might want as a memory:
| messages, photos, etc., and to clean up (close) all their
| accounts to prevent identity theft.
|
| A few notes of interesting things I've found:
|
| Observing inbound mail for over a year is by far the best way to
| learn where a person has accounts. I found a ton of services that
| weren't listed in the password file by seeing "year end summary"
| or "we've updated our terms" emails. And then of course email
| access is useful to reset the password and get in.
|
| No one sends more fucking email than politicians. It's honestly
| insane how many emails came in daily to this account from all
| sorts of a candidates, from all over the country. The email list
| sharing is blatant and rampant. And without regular pruning
| (unsubscribing, marking as spam), the volume just grows and
| grows.
|
| Some companies have very handy "close and delete this account"
| features. Some let you end a paid subscription, but there's no
| way to remove the account. In one case I killed a subscription to
| a paper and then was able to log in as the deceased 4 years
| later! But many services do prune: in many cases, trying to log
| in years later failed.
|
| When there was not a "delete account" feature, I filed a support
| request to delete, explaining that the account holder had passed
| away. When that did not work I filed a legal request to delete
| personal data, citing the data privacy law of the state in which
| the deceased resided. That worked well.
|
| I ended up paying to keep the deceased's phone number active for
| a while because I kept finding accounts that were set to send SMS
| codes to permit login. The deceased was good about security,
| which ended up costing me, ha. Notably, the mobile provider never
| cut off the number or seemed to notice that a dead person's phone
| was still active. As long as the bill gets paid, they don't look
| too closely I guess.
| jamesu wrote:
| Not having a proper account deletion method for deceased
| persons was one of my big pet peeves when sorting out accounts
| of a family member.
| camkego wrote:
| > No one sends more fucking email than politicians.
|
| Isn't it nice how politicians excluded themselves from most of
| the rules regulating businesses regarding spam and email laws.
| BrandoElFollito wrote:
| In the US, I guess. Here in France we never get emails from
| any candidates, this is against the law (not specifically for
| politicians, for everything)
| rvnx wrote:
| In France it's totally fine to send spam emails during
| elections, maybe you just got lucky ?
|
| There are even auto-calls https://www.ouest-
| france.fr/elections/presidentielle/preside...
|
| "Hello this is Eric Zemmour"
|
| > Soit vous avez indique votre numero de telephone sur un
| formulaire a destination du parti ou du candidat, soit il
| s'est procure votre numero en achetant ou en louant une
| base de donnees - contenant votre numero - aupres d'une
| societe privee.
|
| So it can be basically any source.
| dylan604 wrote:
| >No one sends more fucking email than politicians.
|
| LinkedIn enters the chat. I have given up trying to turn off
| email notifications from LinkedIn. One of the last acts I did
| with my FB account was to finally get it to stop sending
| emails, yet LI refuses to stop.
| hsbauauvhabzb wrote:
| LinkedIn mobile app adds new notification classes and assumes
| you opt in, even if you've opted out of all the other spam.
|
| However, email from LinkedIn is not something I've had an
| issue with, personally.
| RataNova wrote:
| And just another example of how systems aren't really designed
| with death in mind
| technothrasher wrote:
| > I ended up paying to keep the deceased's phone number active
| for a while
|
| I've ported a few numbers that I wanted to keep for a bit
| without needing the cell plan any longer to a Google Voice
| account. Then I just forward the number to my own cell phone.
| lioeters wrote:
| > keep the deceased's phone number active for a while
|
| I wish I had known this. After my father passed away a few
| years ago, I had a password list but some accounts required
| 2FA, and unfortunately I didn't have access to his phone. It
| locked me out of some services where I would have liked to have
| archived the data, like photos and posts.
|
| At some point though, data is similar to material possessions -
| someone has to spend the effort of keeping it archived and
| accessible. Eventually people move on and the data is either
| forgotten or lost. And it's OK to let it go, nothing lasts
| forever.
| beretguy wrote:
| Good argument against 2FA.
| barbazoo wrote:
| Against SMS as the only second factor, for sure!
| glaksmono wrote:
| I wonder if there's a service provider who can help manage
| all these - akin to your lawyer or "will contract"
| ed_elliott_asc wrote:
| I'm in the UK and I managed to end up on trumps subscription
| list begging for money
| metalman wrote:
| presumably there are a great and growing number of people who
| will have no one to clean up there online presence, and depending
| on how things are set up, and how much money is floating there,
| possibly earning, then itd hard to say how long things might
| last. where things will get tricky is with personal AI, that
| could in such a case, become imortal if so instructed, or rather,
| given the scale and general wierdness of things, there must be
| something like that happening now so one more trueism is gone,
| you CAN take it with you when you die
| dylan604 wrote:
| I wonder if the sites will do something internally to see that
| the provided DOB for the account is now > 100 years old, and
| just start silently deactivating those accounts. Then again,
| why would they care? If deceased person's account becomes
| hacked and then taken use by some identity theft type
| situation, why would that platform care? It's just a user to
| them and continues to be potential revenue generating.
| zeroq wrote:
| A side note about closing accounts.
|
| I keep a list of services I closed or asked for my account to be
| removed and forgot. Today you even often have to make an account
| to take a look at a tech demo, because the author tries to avoid
| abuse of their AI service key they used for such demo.
|
| After about two years many of these services start sending me
| messages again. Sometimes it turns out that the account is active
| again.
|
| Recently a recruiter send me an email with a standard cold call:
| "I have a position that will be a perfect fit for you". I asked
| where she got my contact and how's that position be a perfect
| fit, trying to get a feel what she actually knows about me. She
| said she got the my profile from LinkedIn. When I asked her to
| post me a link to my profile it turned out the profile was
| closed. Somehow LI kept the profile and shared my details when
| she used some recruiter features. ;)
| RandomBacon wrote:
| LinkedIn also starts spamming you after X months/years since
| you last clicked "unsubscribe" (at least twice that I can
| recall, so probably "years")
|
| They are absolute trash, scum of the earth, when it comes to
| respecting users (Nextdoor does the same, they did it more
| often at first, I think every six months).
| silisili wrote:
| I still remember when I first signed up for LinkedIn years
| ago on my phone. Following the default flow and not paying
| much attention, it sent connection invitations to seemingly
| everyone I'd ever had gmail correspondence with.
|
| Sure it's my fault for not paying attention, but what kind of
| default is that?
| porridgeraisin wrote:
| > what kind of default is that?
|
| The Microsoft kind
| scott_w wrote:
| LinkedIn was doing this _long_ before MS bought them.
| Abusing your contact list is their specialty and one of
| the ways they grew so quickly.
| jwalton wrote:
| This is why the LinkedIn app is and will always be banned
| from my phone.
| WhyNotHugo wrote:
| I ensured that my LinkedIn email was set to private and set it
| to a unique address not used anywhere else.
|
| I still get emails from recruiters a couple of times a month.
|
| LinkedIn leaks your private data even if instructed not to do
| so.
| elzbardico wrote:
| I made arrangements for my family to have access to my accounts
| and instructions on deleting most of them, with special emphasis
| on linked-in.
| keernan wrote:
| I can't even guess at the number of accounts I haven't touched in
| 10+ years.
| eadmund wrote:
| An old friend passed away a few years ago, and sadly all of our
| Facebook messages have disappeared forever. I really wish that I
| could read them again. It's very sad.
|
| Oh well.
| palmotea wrote:
| You might be able to find them in your account's data dump. I
| have a friend who deleted their Facebook account, but their
| messages still show up in the dump as "Facebook User". Check
| <zip file>/your_facebook_activity/messages/inbox.
| summermusic wrote:
| My password manager has an emergency access feature[0] which
| allows my spouse to gain access to the vault (and all the
| passwords, passkeys, PINs, etc. in there) after 7 days. I also
| set this feature up with my parents so I will be able to handle
| their digital legacy too.
|
| [0] https://bitwarden.com/help/emergency-access/
| RataNova wrote:
| This article really resonated with me. A few years ago, I lost a
| friend, and their dormant social media accounts became these
| strange digital echoes... like finding an old voicemail you
| forgot existed.
| alkonaut wrote:
| I intend to make sure people know how to use my email. With that,
| and my phone, they should have access to all accounts indirectly
| via password resets through that email address. I won't bother
| with a long digital will or handing over a password manager or
| anything like that, this sounds like way too much complexity. One
| account - the email.
|
| I kind of wish there was an inactive account setting as default,
| where every account was disabled after 1 year of inactivity (but
| keept the user name to prevent squatting), then sent a yearly
| reminder and deleted them after 10 years or something.
| mediumsmart wrote:
| _I don't care_
|
| but thanks for making me smile.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Nothing, I still get random notifications from folks that sadly
| aren't around anylonger, but no one has disabled their social
| accounts.
| DebtDeflation wrote:
| A guy I worked with at a former employer died around 2015. Every
| year, for almost a decade, I get a notification from LinkedIn to
| congratulate him on his work anniversary.
| ericyd wrote:
| > Are the bits and bytes that make up our book reviews, photos,
| and short-form shouts into the void really so important? I say
| yes. These digital ephemera are part of our legacy.
|
| Death and grief are challenging experiences and I certainly don't
| want to diminish anyone's suffering. That said, I prefer to take
| the opposite approach and acknowledge that digital ephemera are
| truly not very important, with the small exception of a
| relatively short period (<10 years) after your death. I don't
| exactly have a "solution" in mind, but I reject the notion that
| we should preserve online artifacts forever as part of an
| individual's legacy.
|
| I don't think the author was necessarily suggesting that online
| artifacts should be preserved forever, but this line stuck out to
| me and I felt that I didn't agree with the sentiment.
| sureIy wrote:
| I was in the "archive/hoard everything" camp for several years
| and lately I've taken a very nihilistic approach at life.
|
| I die tomorrow, I don't think you really MUST save my stuff,
| especially anything digital. If I haven't already shared it with
| you, it's not yours to have.
|
| Anything important like bank accounts can already be accessed by
| family with a death certificate; everything else, doesn't matter.
|
| _What happens to my online accounts after I die?_ None of my
| business, I 'm dead.
| zdragnar wrote:
| There's a certain argument that accounts can haunt friends and
| family after you've passed- things like seeing you still there
| in their friends / contacts / feed / whatever.
|
| I think it's worth talking about. There are far bigger problems
| facing many societies, but it doesn't hurt to think about this
| one too.
| commiepatrol wrote:
| There is an ex coworker who died about 10 years ago. People on
| LinkedIn still congratulate him annually with his work
| anniversaries.
| euroderf wrote:
| Not to be too morbid, but, does phone face recognition work on a
| stiff ?
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