Sorry if this inheritance topic has already been addressed before:
Will (or can, legally) computer technicians typically help an heir crack a password-protected computer that is bequeathed by inheritance upon death of the owner? What usually happens to computers left behind when their owner dies suddenly/unexpectedly?
For that matter, are most computer technicians *technologically able *to do that?
I suppose no password is completely foolproof, especially for our common desktop. However, it does bring up a legal issue. You’ve inherited the computer, not the password protected data. That went to someone else, if the deceased wanted it to. How, exactly, are you deprived of your inheritance if the hard drive is wiped, or replaced with a bare bones system?
Doesn’t inheriting something automatically entail inheriting its contents as well (unless otherwise specified?) :dubious:
There are software utilities for cracking passwords. I have used some of these as part of a wargaming group I was in. I do not know what the legal status is in this situation, however.
Yes and no. There are people who own letters from celebrities or politicians that they inherited. They own the physical letter but the heirs of the author own the copyright.
The biggest issue for most heirs are financial transactions: banking, investment, credit cards, loans, bill payments… Traditionally people had monthly statements concerning these and either they were piled up on a desk, saved in a drawer and/or would appear in the mail in the next few weeks. Nowadays so many of these are electronic only.
IANAL but I would assume that the person who inherited the computer would, baring words to the contrary, inherit the physical content of data. That is he could read it, etc. The copyright on the data might not go along with that though. Generally ownership of a copyright is distinct legally from owning a physical copy of the writing as virtually every book demonstrates. Unless the copyright were assigned in the will, I presume its ownership would go to whoever gets everything not explicitly assigned. This might be stated as “I leave everything else to …” or absent that, I assume the spouse or otherwise next of kin.
But I do not see that the copyright holder could prevent the one bequeathed the laptop from looking at the file or even cracking the password.
I can’t speak to the legal question, but the answer to the technical question is a resounding, unequivocal “it depends”. 
The average tech at the local computer store probably can’t help much. But a forensic examiner might be able to. I’m a forensic examiner at a very large IT services company. I have decent resources at my disposal. Some passwords I can crack, some I can’t. If you’re talking about a well implemented full disk encryption with a good password, then I’m pretty much sunk. Things like encrypted volumes or things like Zip archives I have a better chance of cracking.
So… Hard to make a blanket statement.
Much of the typical basic computer software like Windows out there can be cracked with physical access. Specific secure options or software can be made relatively uncrackable. (I haven’t really delved deeply into the options) but basically, simple Windows passwords and MS Office files from what I’ve heard are easily cracked. Software like Truecrypt are allegedly uncrackable but nowadays with the NSA nobody knows for sure. If you deliberately use highly secure software then “the good men do is oft interred with their bones”.
As for email etc. I guess that depends on individual provider policies. A lot of “forgot my password” relies on you being able to access the email provided during sign-up, so I guess that’s as close as you get to a master key.
I suppose the interesting thing is that theoretically, copyright unless explicitly assigned would be split as part of the estate… So should the computer contain any words of value - the when you sell them to National Enquirer then you siblings will come after you for their cut.
What if the deceased was into goat porn? He might not want his survivors to discover his multi-gigabyte collection of this stuff. On the other hand, the deceased might have a secret bank account overseas with the access details in a file on the computer.
If a person were really prepared, he/she would have the details of all of the bank accounts, investment accounts, insurance policies, etc in one document or file folder, perhaps attached to the will. (I’m currently trying to get my parents to detail all of this, as they have money all over the place.)
It’s not hard to access files physically stored on most Windows machines even if you don’t know the password needed for the account. It just needs to allow booting from DVD or USB, which consumer ones pretty much always do.
If you go to a computer technician toting a laptop and say, “Hey, my father / mother / sibling passed away, they left me this password-locked computer, can you open it for me,” what would their likely response be?
“Yes?”
“No?”
“We can’t until you provide documentation that you’re the rightful owner, just in case you’re an identity thief?”
Are you a goat porn dealer? Just askin’
No, no, on second thought, don’t answer that question.
Probably some combination of #2 and #3. When I worked for an independent forensic firm, they’d require some kind of statement that you were the owner, or some authorization from an attorney or something, before doing work on a computer. I’m not sure anymore what kind of documentation they’d accept as proof (I didn’t work there very long).
Now, if you go to the local mom and pop PC repair place, who knows what checks and balances they have in place?
ETA: is this a situation you’re facing IRL, or are we dealing with hypotheticals?
This. If the computer drive is not encrypted, then you can use a Linux live usb to boot into and mount the physical drive to look through the contents. Or you can physically remove the drive and place it in an external usb hard drive enclosure and mount it to look through the contents. If it’s encrypted then you’re sol.
There’s two questions here:
For #1, you just reinstall it clean. In most cases, I’d imagine the deceased meant to bequeath the computer itself, not the contents of the hard drive. So you get some install CD’s and start the install process, completely overwriting the drive in the process. When it’s done, it’s like you have a new computer.
For #2, there are a variety of ways to get past a simple login prompt on the operating system. In most cases, the initial login is like a simple lock on the cover of a book. Once you’re past that lock, you’re in and can access everything. But there’s a more advanced form of encryption where everything on the drive is also encrypted. That would be like having the pages of the book written in a secret code. Breaking the lock doesn’t get you access to the text since you can’t read the code. So if it’s just the simple login, you can easily crack that and use the computer and all the existing contents. But if the disk is encrypted, you’ll typically have to reinstall it clean (unless you have access to someone with mad hacker skills).
Hypothetical. Although it may very well happen IRL someday, given my family and relatives’ penchant for computers.
I was reading this with interest because, I was for a few years backing up my stuff to a WD Smartdrive. And then my computer crashed, and I said, no problem, everything is backed up.
Alas, trouble ahead. When I plugged the external drive into my new computer and put in the password…it said I had the wrong passwords. I tried variations, i.e., the multitude of ways I could have mistyped the password, and nada.
My son the computer expert came over and after some preliminary examinations, declared that, what with the PW not working, not even the FBI could get into this hard drive, as it was encrypted.
So it came down to this: Why was my password not working? And he figured it out. It turned out that all we needed to do was update the driver, and then it took the password.
(The really sucky thing about it was, the device very cheerfully said, “Okay, you can reformat and then continue to use this device.” But…I actually would rather that someone else can get into my data than that I can’t, and if my backup drive is going to do this to me then it’s useless as a backup drive. Less than useless, because I think it’s working. WD support and the place I bought it from basically said the same thing, nothing you can do but reformat it. I’m so glad I didn’t because now I have my stuff back!)
Passwords, sheesh.
Well, most of my data worth anything is encrypted, and the password only exists in my mind, so once I die, that data is gone.
In the near future, I believe this going to be true for iPhones too. The fingerprint sensor deactivates after 8 hours, and if no one else knows the password, that data is effectively unrecoverable. There’s currently some exceptions, such as iCloud backups, but Apple is actively trying to make it impossible for even them to recover any data. And remember, that for many people, smartphones are their only computer.
My password manager lets me set up an email to receive the Master Password if I don’t log in for X days. Since the email is personalized, I can update it with the password to the computer itself, and include other instructions such as “please let soandso know, cancel subscriptions to all these people…”. That means not only access to my computer but also to anything else I do via websites, or anything else for which I’ve left a “read this if I cannot.txt” on the Desktop.
There are also companies which will keep copies of your private records and instructions on what to delete and what to hand over in case of death or inhabilitation.