Leave Your Passwords in Your Will

We are now in an era where we need to hand down passwords to our relatives the way we once handed down safe deposit boxes, safe combinations, etc. A commenter raised a good point about this yesterday in reference to my mention of Elaine Krieg Smith's now dormant blog.

I've never seen an article or blog post about this so I thought I'd mention it here. If you have a blog, it's ideal if someone could leave a post in the event of a tragic accident or if you otherwise become incapacitated. Even if you don't have a blog, you should consider making a list of user IDs and passwords for sites like the following:

• Flickr or other online photo storage site.
• Gmail, Yahoo mail or other web based e-mail that requires a password.
• eBay.
• PayPal.
• Banking website.
• Your blog, MySpace, Facebook and forum passwords.
• Bookselling venues.
  

Give your list to a family member or other trustworthy person. That person should also check your e-mails. I've asked my oldest daughter to keep my list of passwords in a Google Documents file so that it will always be accessible from any computer. She knows how to use Blogger and she's internet-savvy.

A sad example of this is the late Cathy Seipp's blog. During her last few days as she was dying of lung cancer her daughter took over and wrote blog posts that kept readers informed.

I know Elaine subscribed to my blog's feed so if she's out there I hope we hear from her.