Good luck with that.

Most people can't be bothered with such mundane details. They let the browser remember.

We have tech that does its damndest to keep us from thinking. Social media feeds us automatically what it thinks we want, and we lap it up like thirsty dogs.

I don't see this initiative going anywhere.

"Social media feeds us automatically what it thinks we want wants us to think "

FTFY.

That’s a password manager, trouble is it will have a username, password, email address and potentially a mobile phone number associated with it. Naturally the phone will have an unlock code or biometric and the email account will also have its own access credentials which may use a totally different phone for SFA…

The fun and games really start when you discover the dead person was using an online share dealing account (for example) so need to firstly get into their PC etc., (to find out the details of the account); however you only discover this when going through a stack of papers and discover an annotated Excel spreadsheet, naturally this is after the phone and internet have been cancelled and so you can’t receive the authentication email sent to the email address provided as part of the broadband subscription…

Yes it was worth the effort in the end, even though no evidence of cryptocurrency trading was discovered.

Would not be surprised if in the coming years there are an increasing number of wealthy people who leave minimal real inheritance due to the wealth being locked in wholly digital accounts…

I regularly advise clients on making a will and first off hit them with a list of things they ought to do of which the Japanese recommendations are only a small part.

On the one hand the list gets longer every year.

On the other it is a cold dose of reality when you have an A4 page of items setting out your whole existence.

After a health scare, I did make double sure my collection of Steam and GOG games would stay in the family.

Which isn't a given, as their licenses are non-transferable and tied to an individual.

Unlike banks and such which have a legal duty to hand over control of the deceased accounts, at this point, they don't and they won't.

Considering how much money we now spend in those subscriptions, I hope that will change...

Jurisdictions vary. Was it SK or Japan that ruled a few years back that digital assets were transferable? Can't remember. It's in El Reg somewhere!

I certainly think they should be, but enforcement...

Considering how much money we now spend in those subscriptions, I hope that will change...

Perhaps the most effective way to change it would not be to hand over significant sums of money in exchange for an ephemeral asset.

However, in reality, most of our purchases of physical media have always in practice been ephemeral too. Most households no longer have the means to play Edison cylinders, 9.5mm film, 78rpm records, laser discs, video cassettes or minidiscs. Even my old paperback books are starting to deteriorate. Even charity shops will turn away a lot of physical media for which there is no significant demand.

Having been an executor on a number of occasions, as I head through old age my priority is going to be to minimise the burden for those who have to clean up after me - not having unnecessary contracts and not burdening them with artefacts they probably don't want and will struggle to dispose of.

"I did make double sure my collection of Steam and GOG games would stay in the family."

Do your family actually want them or is it an encouragement to keep you alive as long as possible?

A lot of the services state that they are non-transferrable. So a family member logging into takeover an account (even just to shut it down) could be construed as illegal activity.

In Japan, clearly you could point to this government memo that your just following government advice, but elsewhere?

I could absolutely imagine the likes of Facebook suing someone for cancelling a paid subscription from a dead relative. At least, if they thought they could get away with...

Pretty sure that Apple now has a contact name that can be added to an iCloud account for access in time of death. Though don't know how it works in practice.

With fingerprint and faceID so common, unlocking kit gets trickier. People forget the password.

I look after a lot of elderly people and get them to use a simple address book to keep track of things. This also makes it more likely they will use unique passwords.

Death is not the only time this situation occurs. I have had clients who get dementia or have a stroke, and forget everything. One example case of a stroke it was very handy he had kept a spreadsheet of his account data as the wife could then carry on running the house. Otherwise she would have been locked out of her own house accounts at a very stressed time.

"Write it down" is against the "security practices". But when you are talking about people in their homes this is by far the safest option. Just keep the book safe and let loved ones know about it.

"Write it down" is against the "security practices"

I've done this as my health isn't good. In the event of my death my wife has an envelope with a letter with a list of accounts and passwords. We've not been burgled yet, but would expect a burglar to be more interested in electronics and other valuables they could sell on, rather than rifle through piles of documents.

Back in the days before I retired I did a number of years contracting under my own limited company, an elderly local accountant handled all my paperwork and submissions to HMRC, companies house etc. However, he was getting a bit long in the tooth and started forgetting to submit documents on time. His assistant had a quiet word with me and suggested I changed accountant as his memory was starting to fail (dementia). I got a youthful new accountant in his 30's. This worked well for a few years (I was living in France at the time) then I got a letter out of the blue from bailiffs demanding payment of a fine to Companies House for non-submission of the year end accounts. Turned out my accountant in the UK, who was also my registered company address, had got struck down with terminal cancer and died taking all my financial details with him to the grave. I managed to scavenge some details from one of his USB sticks with the help of his widow, she was locked out of his pc, but had a hell of a job getting the figures sorted and dealing with Companies House etc. This was the final straw and I retired, having overdosed on red tape and bureaucracy.

If I'm dead... it's not my problem anymore...

I have a "deathbox" which is a fireproof lockbox with my basic usernames and passwords (email etc) and then my bitwarden username and master password for everything else. All bundled up alongside will, insurance docs, a list of bills that are in my name that'd need changing etc just to reduce the admin in that first couple of weeks.

I've worked in too many banks and call centres as a younger man having to deal with stressed widows trying to untangle someone's life and being charged for months of subscriptions without realising they were active and trying to deal with getting those refunded etc and blundering through it all when they're not exactly in a decent frame of mind anyway