Memento mori,% username%!

    The old song sings:
    After us in this world
    A couple of faxes remain
    And a page on the Internet ...
    (Vitaliy Kalashnikov, bards.ru)

    Today we are going to talk about such a gloomy side of human being as a person’s departure from life. In itself tragic, this event gives rise to a lot of legal consequences: from the termination of various obligations to the transfer of ownership of property that the deceased had during his lifetime to his legal heirs.

    It would seem that the issues of inheritance are so trivial, and everything connected with them is so meticulously regulated by the current legislation that the need for discussion on the topic of the posthumous transfer of rights may seem very doubtful. But this is only at first glance.

    Think about it: how does the property complex of a modern person differ from the property of his great-grandfather? Our contemporaries have a lot of ownership in digital form: sites, accounts, license keys and much more. And if, with what inherited from our great-grandfathers, legal science has long been sorted out, and with the inheritance of material values ​​everything seems to be clear for a long time, then with the virtual property there may very interesting - but no less unpleasant - difficulties and problems .

    Unfortunately, the legislative framework (not to mention the practice of law enforcement) is seriously lagging behind technical progress, so some of the procedures that are very necessary today have simply not yet been developed.

    The main source of headache was and remains the inheritance of domain names. Note that this does not apply to corporate domains, we are talking about domain names registered by citizens. The essence of the problem is the lack of a direct inheritance mechanism for domain names that is simply not provided for by Russian law. The fact is that the registration of a domain name is performed under a service agreement, and they are not included in the estate (more about this is described on the website of the Coordination Center of the national Internet domain).

    The same difficulties, by the way, can arise with the transfer of rights to hosting services, but in this case it is at least possible to access scripts and content if you have an account password (we will touch on the topic of transferring passwords below), which makes it possible to transfer the site to another account or to another provider. This will not affect the site’s accessibility for visitors. The domain name is a unique address at which the site is available on the network, and its loss can mean the death of the entire project.

    So far, the only one hundred percent reliable option of transferring a site by inheritance is the registration of a domain name and the conclusion of an agreement on the provision of hosting services for a legal entity. All other options imply a certain risk of its loss.

    Another kind of problem is the moral and ethical side of maintaining accounts on publicly available resources like blog hosting and social networks. It is quite obvious that after a certain period of time these services will be filled with user accounts that will never be added to someone else's list of friends and will not be written to the blog. And it is completely incomprehensible what to do with the accounts of deceased users: delete, block, close for viewing by strangers? To whom, how and on what basis to transfer control over them?

    Probably, it’s time for mass resources to add the “user died” flag to the user profile interface that blocks any actions with the account. But to whom to trust to put this flag? Require a death certificate to provide access to someone’s personal blog? So sorry, the user did not present a passport when registering, it is impossible to identify it! And okay, if this is a personal blog, and if a person was the administrator of a large community, whose functioning is now under threat?

    Thus, the issue of the posthumous transfer of passwords is becoming increasingly relevant. It should be noted right away that in life it is unlikely that someone will hand over a piece of paper with passwords to another person. Such information is often not trusted by anyone, but it should not be irretrievably lost either. To solve this problem, a lot of services appeared on the Internet that offer the “electronic testament” service: the user saves all the necessary information, indicates his address and the address of the assignee, after which he will only have to periodically respond to letters, confirming that he is still alive. If you did not answer several letters in a row, then the information is sent to the heir.

    The solution, it seems, is quite obvious, but it also carries a lot of pitfalls. Firstly, you can not insure against false alarms of the system. Secondly, the user trusts extremely confidential information to the system without receiving any guarantees in return! And even if the owners of the service are respectable people, their site may well be hacked with all the ensuing consequences. But we want the passwords to be transferred to the right hands at the right time, and before that no one could use them!

    This is not so difficult: combining existing methods of making wills and modern methods of protecting information, it is technically possible to transfer passwords and similar confidential information by inheritance.

    For example, citizen N creates a list of passwords and (optionally) directions to whom to transfer them, and encrypts it with a public key, which is always available to him in case of a need to make changes to the file. This file can be stored anywhere: even in the system of "electronic wills", even on the desktop of a citizen - if only the heirs could get unhindered access to it. And the key needed to restore information is stored in a closed will , and becomes known to the heirs only after the death of N.

    Not the easiest solution? Maybe! However, it implies a rather high probability of transmitting information to those people to whom it is addressed - and to no one else.

    What is the result? It is quite possible to implement the transfer of inherited passwords to accounts, sites, computers and networks, bank accounts, etc., as well as sites in general, including domain names, within the framework of existing legal mechanisms and technological capabilities. However, this is associated with certain difficulties and requires the attraction of temporary and financial resources. Whether the game is worth the candle, of course, everyone must decide for himself. At least until a different - convenient, reliable and transparent - tool for these very purposes has been created.

    Live long and do not get sick!

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