Well it doesn’t get much more morbid than this, does it? TechCrunch Disrupt winner PassMyWill is a new web service which promises to work out when you are longer with this world, and then to take care of all your online passwords and data.
The idea is simple, and possibly a little too simple, but is also its charm.
Make your Internet presents available to the people you love after you pass away. Sign up today at http://PassMyWill.com
How PassMyWill works is this: you give the service all your login credentials, including Twitter, Facebook, your personal blog, everything, and PassMyWill keeps all the data on its servers, nicely encrypted and away from prying eyes. You continue on with your life, carrying on just like normal.
During this time, PassMyWill is monitoring your social networks like Facebook and Twitter, and when it decides that you have been inactive long enough, the service decides that you must have passed on to whatever non-denominational afterlife you choose to subscribe to. At this point, PassMyWill swings into action and emails all your login credentials to a person of your choice. They then have to authenticate themselves using a pre-arranged passcode, and that’s it. They then have access to everything.
Now, there are a few things that concern us ever-so-slightly about this kind of thing, beyond the obvious morbidness of the whole situation.
Firstly, if the trigger for PassMyWill deciding you are dead is simply a lack of activity, how long is that period? Is it conceivable that a lack of internet connection at your remote home could result in the service deciding you are no longer with us? What if we all move on from Facebook and Twitter? Presumably PassMyWill will move on with us, but you get our concerns.
Speaking of moving on, what’s to say PassMyWill will be around in six months time, let alone 6 years? Given the fact that the service appears to be free, can we really rely on it being there when we need it?
Our recommendation? All your login details in a very secure file, on a USB drive, in a large metal safe.
That’s going to be around long after PassMyWill dies.
You can follow us on Twitter or join our Facebook page to keep yourself updated on all the latest from Microsoft, Google, Apple and the web.