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Comment by autoreleasepool | Hacker News Reader

I actually intend for my private data to die with me. I have gone out of my way to guarantee that it will. In my view, if I haven't published it, then it shouldn't be accessible.

I have absolutely nothing to hide. I have simply always treated my privacy as something that was valuable in it of itself. Perhaps even more valuable than the photos I clearly opted to not share with others, to go off your example.

I also don't understand why it's so absurd for some people to conceptualize non-malicious things you wouldn't wasn't to share with anyone but yourself. Hell, I have tons of notes and things I write to myself that I definitely do not want to be seen by anyone. They simply weren't written with the intention to be read by others. So I don't sympathize with desire to make a deceased person's private things accessible, even to family. Let it burn. It might have been the owner's intention all along.

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Since you're responding to me I'm assuming you mean me, but I have no problem conceptualizing non-malicious things you would want to keep private.

The problem here is that a lot of the stuff stored on phones falls somewhere between "dies with me" private and "should pass on to my family" private. Or "should be recoverable if I lose my key" private.

Strong encryption makes it impossible to recover in the event of a lost key or pass on to family in the event of your death. So that's not necessarily a great default for, say, decades of family photos. It would be a huge tragedy if that was lost.

The good news is that Apple does provide tools to opt-in to stronger security, rather easily. For example, the Notes app was recently upgraded with note-level strong encryption. That might be a good solution for your most private notes, without endangering the survivability of your digital memories and assets.

Yes, It's different for everyone. I didn't mean to accuse of being one of those people, I was speaking generally there. I'm sorry if my phrasing was bad. My main concern is that people are scared to admit they use the best, because they will be accused of being criminals. The stigma is harmful.

Imagine if somebody is writing down there dreams, writing there intimate deep thoughts, tracking symptoms of a medicine, using drugs recreationally...etc. These things might be very very private and be totally abusable outside of context.

That's what a last will is for: "...and the passphrase for my inheritable private stuff is 12345; it's the file named Blah.xyzzy.foo on my desktop, decryptable using BazBarFoo (installed)."

Most people don't write wills. Their assets shouldn't be lost forever as a result. That would be terrible.

It would be better to opt-in to auto-destruct-when-i-die, not opt-out. It's more of a special case. E.g. create encrypted notes for super secret stuff you want to die with you, but let the default security for photos and documents be "private but recoverable in the event of death or forgotten key."

Not to mention, writing that password down in a will would be pretty bad from a security standpoint while you're alive.

Yes, autodestruct should probably be opt-in.

Most people don't stick their wills to their monitors with post-its (there are other secrets in there after all, and many people would like to know those); the legal system has mature tools that are surprisingly good at keeping such secrets secret until the release conditions are met. A will is a Solved Problem, with highly reliable solutions - consider the ways to prove that it is indeed to be opened. Contrast with most computerized solutions and "solutions" thereof, mostly hinging on some form of dead man's switch.

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