How to manage the digital legacy you leave behind

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

What needs to be done so that after death you do not leave traces of your existence and ownerless digital property on the Internet.

It used to be like this: when someone died, the executor cleaned the house of the deceased, looked through his documents and filed a tax return. It was all difficult, but at least tangible. Today, when a significant part of a person's life is spent on the Internet, our relatives have an additional headache: how to dispose of accounts and purchases, if you don't even know about many of them?

Twenty years ago, the executor of the will needed only to collect the mail for the last three months. Now that we are in a digital society, without paper, everyone has important information in their heads.

New York attorney Alison Besunder

How to take an inventory of digital life - online bank accounts, social media accounts, and email - has only recently become the standard in real estate management. Besander has compiled a list of things that each of her clients must deal with in order to identify all the components of their life on the web.

The first steps

First, a will should be drawn up and an executor should be appointed. He should have all your digital assets and online accounts at his disposal.

Break all digital to-do's into smaller chunks to make it easier to sort tasks into categories. There are four main components:

1. Passwords.
2. Online bank accounts and other financial assets.
3. Email addresses and social media accounts.
4. Digital assets like photos and music.

Passwords

Make sure the contractor can access your computer, phone and accounts. Keep your password list up to date and do not leave it in prominent places - especially in the workspace. At a minimum, there should be someone who knows the password for your main computer and phone.

You can use a password manager. In some of them, you can assign an emergency contact who can open your vault if you die or become incapacitated. It is advisable to change the master password for the service every few months in order not to become a victim of a data leak.

Besander says it's especially difficult after a person dies to access their Apple ID. Therefore, it is advisable to save the data from such an account separately.

Finance

The contractor needs to know what bank accounts you have and how to access them. At the very least, write down the bank address and account numbers. The same goes for insurance policies, stocks, brokerage and retirement accounts, and credit cards. Go through all your cards and make a list of recurring payments: these can be utilities, loans, and even a subscription to Yandex. Music.

Email addresses and social networks

Save your email password in a special file. If you use Gmail, you can set up the "Just in Case" service so that your attorney will immediately receive a notification if something happens.

Other services have different terms. For example, Yahoo will never give your account to anyone, and Microsoft will send the artist a DVD with all the contents of your mailbox.

In the case of social media, your actions should depend on how important your account is to you. If you have seven million Instagram followers and you can make good money on, you can write a cover letter with instructions on how to use your account.

Facebook has the ability to designate a “custodian” who will manage your account. Twitter allows an executor of a will or a family member to deactivate an account. The social network "VKontakte" also has instructions on how to close the page of a person who is not alive.

Digital assets

If you have any substantial intellectual property, such as an unfinished novel, on your hard drive, then you should give your representative instructions on how to dispose of it. If it’s not that big of a deal - for example, photographs or handwritten music - then it’s still worth giving instructions on who will get the content.

With purchases like music from iTunes, things are a little more complicated: by clicking Buy, you are not actually buying the content, but only getting a license to use it. Therefore, Apple will not allow these purchases to be transferred in the same way as CDs.

Think about what else you own: digital money, games, or domain names, for example. Make a complete list, and as an additional measure, you can put whatever you get into the cloud service.

Finally, think about your online portfolio or blog, which might also host your work. Organize your articles and drawings so your family members know what to do with all of this.

Get help

If all of this makes you dizzy, then hire a lawyer. It will help you allocate digital assets and provide guidance on how to access and share them. Just make sure your attorney is knowledgeable about these matters first: don't hesitate to ask questions about his or her experience with digital heritage.