alt.hn

4/8/2026 at 1:13:52 PM

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

by orbanlevi

4/8/2026 at 10:05:00 PM

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.

by raw_anon_1111

4/8/2026 at 1:48:02 PM

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.

by alcazar

4/8/2026 at 2:44:40 PM

Wow, why every day and not weekly? Every day seems too frequent.

by chistev

4/8/2026 at 3:42:27 PM

I also thought that, but I like it this way. It supports weekly checks as well.

by alcazar

4/8/2026 at 8:41:20 PM

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

by sdevonoes

4/8/2026 at 2:10:08 PM

You better watch out for is 2FA, sometimes even with passwords people still get locked out, so backup codes can help.

by zplb

4/8/2026 at 8:00:22 PM

I heard someone talking about the Dead Hand system that lowkey sounds as interesting as hell gonna try it out

by iamdecatalyst

4/8/2026 at 1:39:55 PM

I want to know too, mine is using pure iCloud

by tombelieber

4/8/2026 at 4:54:51 PM

hard disk from the 90s

by hernanhumana

4/9/2026 at 1:03:45 AM

[dead]

by agenexus

4/8/2026 at 5:01:15 PM

[dead]

by tuxnotfound