alt Hacker News> I've often wondered about how to reliably take software actions after my death
This is actually fairly simple and well understood: leave instructions in your will.
"Notify <Provider> to delete my account" is a perfectly valid instruction to leave for an executor.
You could leave behind a password cache with a master password left in your will, but I suspect much of this still runs on trust. I'd imagine (I haven't tried), that "X has died, please take action Y" is a fairly reliable social engineering vector if you have a convincing "proof" that X has died.
It's worth noting that the executor isn't hard forced to carry out your wishes, the legal recourse for them not doing so comes from other beneficiaries ability to take legal action against the executor. If those other beneficiaries don't care much for enforcement, then you might prefer technical methods such as the submission.
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The „X has died, please take action Y“ thing also only works if the service reliably knows that the account belongs to X. My executor can’t delete my HN account because he can’t prove it’s actually my account (without getting the password).
I keep a "death README" with all of my online and offline account credentials and phone unlock codes, PII that might be needed to authenticate w/ various companies' services, copies of wills, trusts, powers of attorney, health care proxies and so on, copies of all vital docs like marriage certificate, birth certificates, home router SSIDs and passwords, information about doctors, health insurance, life insurance, all financial accounts and brokerages, approximate balances, bills and how to pay them, tax returns and how to file them, a list of recurring expenses and how to pay them, property w/ approximate values, and so on. A hardcopy is kept in our house where next of kin can find it if needed without knowing a safe combination, but casual robbers wouldn't stumble across.