Ride the Lightning

What Will Happen to Your Digital Life When You Die? Will it Go to Hell?

June 17, 2020

Too many people don't like thinking about their death. Even those who have wills/trusts have rarely prepared their digital life for their death.

A recent post by PC Magazine notes the inevitability of death and then cautions, "Don't be the guy who locked cryptocurrency exchange customers out of $250 million after his death because only he knew the password."

From Instagram to LinkedIn (and soon, Twitter), there are ways your heirs can request access to your accounts once you've died, but why stress them out with those complicated procedures? Several online services allow you to designate legacy contacts or grant access after a period of inactivity. The post teaches you how to manage your digital accounts.

You can create a password manager emergency kit with the keys to all your digital accounts and pass them on to a loved one.

1Password has you create an Emergency Kit when you sign up, which includes all the information someone would need to log into your account. Print it out or download a copy to a USB drive and place it in a lock box, where your heirs can access it upon your death. In addition to storing passwords for your financial accounts, you can also store information like bank numbers, credit card numbers, and any other important information you might need to leave behind.

Keeper and Dashlane have similar features. If you use Keeper, open your vault on the site, then navigate to Account > Manage Account Emergency Access. There, you can add up to five email addresses as emergency contacts. The site also allows you to set up a seven-day waiting period, so if you don't use your account in that time, your contacts are notified.

You can do the same in the Dashlane desktop app by navigating to Contacts > Emergency > Add New and entering the email address of an emergency contact. You will then be able to set a span of time before your contacts can request access to your vault and automatically get approved.

Do be careful though – sometimes this kind of access can violate a site's Terms of Service. Your read those, right?

Facebook lets you select a legacy contact who will memorialize your account and keep a pared-down version of your profile active after your death. A memorialized account will show a banner on your profile indicating that you're deceased, remove your account from public search results, and turn off birthday reminders. Friends will still be able to post messages on your timeline, if privacy settings allow it.

Read the post to get the details.

You can also opt to have your account deactivated after you die; under Memorialization Settings, scroll down and click Request that your account be deleted after you pass away, and opt in in the pop-up window.

On Facebook-owned Instagram, you can't designate a legacy content; friends or family members will have to request that Instagram memorialize your account after the fact.

Google offers an Inactive Account Manager that automatically turns over control of your account to a designated person after a set period of inactivity. Again, read the post for the details.

If you have two-factor authentication set up on important accounts, your loved ones will need access to your phone, in addition to your username and passwords, in order to receive secondary codes. How to accomplish that is fully set forth in the post.

If you ignore preparing your digital life for your death, you will leave a world of heartburn for your family/heirs. Been there, done that.

Sharon D. Nelson, Esq., President, Sensei Enterprises, Inc.
3975 University Drive, Suite 225|Fairfax, VA 22030
Email: Phone: 703-359-0700
Digital Forensics/Cybersecurity/Information Technology
https://senseient.com
https://twitter.com/sharonnelsonesq
https://www.linkedin.com/in/sharondnelson
https://amazon.com/author/sharonnelson