A safe word for my wife

in #security5 years ago

I was asked about the bushfires in Australia by a new client today, and this led into a discussion about what we would grab if our own homes went up in flames, assuming that the family and pets are already safe. This is actually more interesting than many might think as what the thought experiment actually investigates is what has value.

In this kind of situation we will likely look at what can't be easily replaced and what that means is, what has a high degree of scarcity and often, this has sentimental value. When the question was posed in the not so distant past, many people would say things like their "wedding photos" but, that has become far less relevant to most people these days as they carry them in their phone and on cloud servers.

What would you grab given a couple minutes at best to leave your home?

 
This question also raises some other things to consider, as while we spend a great deal of time, energy and money making our home nice, on the way out the door, we really don't value those things at all. The hours spent searching for the perfect couch are irrelevant in pressure situations, the sunk costs forgotten.

While the client and I talked together, I thought that just about the only things I would want would be my digital assets, my passwords. This sets up a problem because while I don't necessarily need them, for most things, my wife will not be able to work out what to do at all and, even if she could, they are encrypted and she will likely not have memorized the necessary components.

In the advent of my death, eventually my cloud storage runs out of money to keep it open and my pictures are gone and anything else of value there. I haven't investigated this thoroughly yet, but there should be "in the advent of death" solutions available for family members that do not require a lawyer to oversee. Maybe a blockchain for the dead, where people can opt in to store encrypted information that can only be released by certain people with various checks and security measures for verification of identity and well, the death itself.

My wife isn't overly technical nor is she security conscious, so there has to be easy and foolproof (I am not calling her a fool - but if the shoe fits ;D) way to at least get access to basic information that can lead to more advanced information. I guess what my wife and I need is, a safe word.

Now, this obviously can't be just a safe word like in the bedroom that could be waterboarded out of us, so it has to be compartmentalized to some degree, or accept the risk of torture. Potentially, if someone is going to torture any of us for some keys, we are already in a situation we are screwed anyway. I still assume that it is safer than carrying around gold bars in our pockets, or a map to buried treasure.

Obviously, this isn't well thought out, but it is getting increasingly more important that our digital lives are protected after our physical death, or in times of conflict. If we family need to run for some reason with nothing more than the clothes on our back, I want to make sure that no matter where we are, we have more resources than what we carry with us.

I believe that the greater the uncertainty and volatility in the world due to economic and political unrest, the more vital personal wealth assurance becomes. This is more of a challenge than many may think as most of us have come to rely on third-party insurance for everything of value in our lives and even storing things digitally in a cloud requires access to the service, something that can be revoked at any time.

But, for the situation of a house burning down, I do not have to consider war or being tortured, I just have to make sure that everything I need is available despite losing everything else. Passwords, encrypted documents and everything I need to get access to or contact information for everything of importance.

We have to know what has value enough to grab before our home is burning down and the best situation of all is that being, nothing at all. Ultimately, the safest position is being able to have fire engulf it all and know that regardless of all the loss, nothing of true value was taken. Once the safety of the family and dog is confirmed, the material can be considered and there is very little in life that money can't buy, that money can't buy again.

I have heard many stories in my life of people bravely dying fighting fires to save their home, without the recognition that what they are actually saving is a house. As they say, the home is where the heart is, and that heart beats inside us, not between four walls and a roof.

For me, I play with fire often in a mental game I call Psychological Pyromania where I think about and mentally and emotionally try to prepare for the worst eventualities. When one has already accepted the loss of everything held dear, recovering from loss can begin faster and therefore, the rebuilding can happen earlier. I have found that the preparation isn't easy to do as my mind searches for comfort and doesn't like being forced to think about loss, but the process is valuable.

The greatest benefit of considering the loss of everything considered valuable is, being grateful for what one has.

Taraz
[ a Steem original ]

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This was super deep — it first had me thinking about what would I save? What would be the things I ran to first? And all in all this line got me, “ Once the safety of the family and dog is confirmed, the material can be considered and there is very little in life that money can't buy, that money can't buy again.”

It has all the feels inside that statement. We worry so much about things we can replace, that we are willing to risk things we cannot replace. Like our lives.

We worry so much about things we can replace, that we are willing to risk things we cannot replace. Like our lives.

We hijack our own wiring by building attachment to the unnecessary.

Very interesting topic.

I don't have much on cloud storage. I have a NAS that I would likely grab. That would cover all password and digital assets. As long as the kids and pets were OK, I think that's all I'd need to rebuild.

In the case of my demise, we have explained how to "crack" each other passwords/security in our wills. So, we are hopefully covered there.

The two things I'd lose would be some really tasty wines/alcohol's and some funky artwork on the walls.

Since you pointed this out ... since my NAS can be anywhere in the house, I should likely move it somewhere closer to an exit (it's currently in a closet in the basement)

I would like to get a NAS set up going, just don't have the resources at the moment.

There is a lot of Linux NAS, open source software, out there which allows you to make one with a "garbage" PC. Essentially for free if you can get your hands on an old PC and a couple of drives. Example of 10 here

I'd just recommend that whichever way you go, at least two drives, at least RAID1, with the capability to hot swap. So ... if one of my drive fails, pull the drive out, replace with a new disk drive. The NAS should recognize the new drive and automagically start rebuilding the mirror/stripe.

NOTE: I have two. One is LaCie brand and the other is Synology. In my opinion, they are both great and for my purposes, neither one is any better than the other.

I will have a look into it, thank you :)

@tipu curate

About 10 years ago we were faced with "evacuation" because of fire. Knock on the door and told evacuate. I went upstairs grabbed my wallet, grabbed the dogs to kennel them up, and I was ready to go. There are few things that are not replaceable, like the wife, the kids and the pets, the rest can be re-bought. Lost photo albums and memory joggers of life in the past, well we just have to be thankful that we are alive to remember the loss of the memory joggers.

Far to many people die trying to protect their hard earned things, only to like you said, lose everything by dying to protect everything.

There is very little I would need to take I think, but I guess if I had a few minutes, it would likely be my camera and some lenses to document the fire :)

I was not into photo's back then, now I would add that, an easy add since it is all in a small back pack case.

Having said that... my camera is a few years old and perhaps insurance.. ;D

I'm glad my partner and I are both techy, if anything happened to me he knows where to find my passwords and I'm sure he'd figure out steem enough to be able to to convert to fiat if he needed to (hopefully in the future steem will be an accepted currency and he won't need to XD). I'd be more screwed if anything happened to him x_x

It's probably easier for us these days with so much stuff being digital and thus easily portable. There are some things I would be upset about going up in smoke but it's a bit less heartbreaking than if my parents' house went up in smoke, their house contains a lot of photo abums and photos in frames some of which date back to their childhood (not many of those for obvious reasons) and other historical things that are only important to our family and there's no way all of them could be saved if they had to leave in a hurry.

I have told who my wife needs to talk to on Steem to help her out - plus there is Galen.

if my parents' house went up in smoke,

This was the conversation my client and I had, as there seems to be quite a difference in value between the generations.

I collect a lot of stuff like rare books that can't be easily replaced. Also the paintings I own, while not crazy expensive, are one of a kind. Not sure what I would grab as I ran out of my burning apartment after my cat

Paintings are an issue (not in my apartment as they are my own works) I had when growing up as pretty much all of my dad's collection that the family owned was in one place.

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