Who’ll get your passwords when you die?

Eve Dmochowska    Just for fun, Life, Uncategorized    

I have a lot of online accounts to 3rd party services. Some of them are irrelevant to me, and some not. Many of them have content that I have created, and that cannot be found anywhere else (such as this blog). When I die, and especially if my death is going to be unexpected, my family will have a hard time to access these services, should they wish to do so. That’s because I am not in the habit of writing down my passwords etc. They are simply stored in my head.

So I was intrigued to come across Legacy Locker. It’s an ingenious service. For a fee, my family will be given the logins and passwords to services, as stipulated by me. They will also receive a “last email”. There is a strict procedure for determining that I am really dead, so there is little chance of security breach.

The fee is quite hefty though, at $300 (or $30 annually, if you don’t think you have that long :-) )

In theory, I guess if my family had access to my principal email account, they could get access to all my other services, by simply requesting a new password, and receiving it via that email. But we have to remember that not everybody is as online savvy as you and me, and sometimes it is nice to have it delivered in black and white. Of course, I could also just type it all up and attach it to my will, for free. (I do after all, have to inform the Executor of the existence of my info with Legacy Locker). But I still believe that there will be people who are eager to signup for this service, and there will be scores of people who will be grateful for that foresight.

The price point is also interesting. In theory, since the service does not really store any serious files itself, the infrastructure cost is minimal. Yet the price is not. The founder could easily have priced this at $10 or $15 and probably still make a hefty profit. On the other hand, since this goes hand in hand with estate planning, one wants to know that the company is serious, and will stick it out for the long run (or at least longer than you). I wonder if we are slowly going to move away from the “Should it be free?” question to the very opposite side of “Should we charge a premium because it will enhance the perception of value ?”. Or if, in true web 2.0 style, there will be a plethora of copycats who are going to compete on price, and bring the price down to an almost free product?

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