Answers/The life queries
How to leave a password to your heirs without giving it to a company
Apple, Google, and most password managers offer 'legacy contact' features — they are convenient and they hand your data to the provider forever. If you'd rather your heirs not need a service to inherit your files, the older mechanisms still work: a sealed envelope with a lawyer, and split secrets across trusted people.
The lawyer's envelope
Write the passphrase on paper. Put it in an envelope. Give the envelope to your lawyer with instructions to open it only after your death and only to your named executor. This is a boring, tested arrangement your local jurisdiction will recognise.
Split secrets, if you like
For higher-stakes cases you can split a passphrase using Shamir's Secret Sharing — three people each hold a share; any two can reconstruct it, one alone cannot. It's a small amount of extra care in exchange for no single-envelope risk.
Elba's role
Elba is the file that reads the sealed bundle. It has no legacy-contact feature and no server; the arrangement is entirely between you, your executor, and whoever holds the passphrase. The company is not in the loop, which is the point.
Questions people actually ask
- Isn't Shamir's Secret Sharing complicated?
- For most people, one envelope with one lawyer is fine. Reserve Shamir for the case where no single trustee is right.
- What if the passphrase paper is lost?
- The contents are gone. That is the honest cost of not trusting a company with a backdoor.
Take the island
Elba is one HTML file. It runs locally in a Chromium browser, seals a folder with AES-256-GCM, never phones home, and becomes open source on 1 January 2030.
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