That’s interesting. I don’t share any passwords with family and have taught my kids to share passwords with no one (written in a sealed envelope as backup).
I don’t like shared passwords although if I really had to, I would just enter it once and let iCloud save it to their account. Stinks if I have to change the password, but I almost never change passwords.
I definitely appreciate the 'security forward' approach... but what about end of life planning or general 'dad's in a comma and XYZ needs to happen'?
1Password with a 'parents vault' that my wife and I share has been a life changer for coordinating family access to important accounts AND ensuring solid passwords are being used.
I don’t share passwords with family, they all know good password hygiene though and use generated passwords for all their services. For end-of-life scenario apple does have digital legacy https://digital-legacy.apple.com/
Speaking as someone who has lost six family members and managed four of those estates since 2019, these digital legacy features are generally incomplete or developed with little view toward reality. Edit: they’re often also not setup by the user or if they are, they’re not reliably updated.
Apple’s implementation, for example, starts a timer that will eventually nuke the account, and it doesn’t provide access to end-to-end encrypted data. That data specifically includes iCloud Keychain, which many people use to store their credentials.
I understand the privacy reasons for that, but when we die we are leaving behind increasingly large or complicated estates of accounts, services, apps, and devices with various and sometimes unpredictable safeguards. Having a loved ones actual credentials has been invaluable every time I’ve managed an estate.
I absolutely understand what you’re saying and I don’t necessarily disagree with it. But break glass access to credentials has proven important in my experience. Especially where continuity of that access is relied upon by others.
I mean if you want family to have access to your accounts when you’re in a coma then you need to set up power of attorney beforehand. Or they can get a conservatorship.
My password file is not really a big concern if I’m in a coma as they’ll need other legal powers my passwords can’t help with. Even with passwords, they aren’t legally allowed to spend funds without power of attorney. And if they have power of attorney they can get passwords.
I don’t like shared passwords although if I really had to, I would just enter it once and let iCloud save it to their account. Stinks if I have to change the password, but I almost never change passwords.