How to Prepare your Digital Life for your Death?
As people plan for the inevitable, their top priority is where they want their property and money to go. Although it is extremely important to decide how your property and money will be disbursed, it is also imperative that you think about your digital life. The rise of technology has come with an increase in online presence and digital assets.
Most people in the world today have social media accounts, emails, photos and videos online, and financial accounts online. The list of digital assets you may have online are endless, thus it is important that you either (1) set up a password manager kit, (2) include your digital assets in your estate plan, or (3) check if the website you are using allows you to add a recipient to your account once you pass away.
How to Prepare your Google Account for your Death?
Google offers an inactive account manager that automatically turns over control of your account to a person that you choose after your account has been inactive for a certain amount of time. Google has a default setting where your account will automatically turn over to the person you assign after three months of no use. However, this default setting may be modified.
With inactive account manager, you may choose up to 10 people who will receive permission to download the data, that you allow in advance, from your google account. This means that you may keep certain data private even after you pass away, your designated individuals will only have access to what you provide.
How to Prepare Facebook for your Death?
Similar to google, Facebook has a feature called “Legacy Contact,” which allows you to designate a person responsible for your Facebook profile once you pass away. When you pass away, your Facebook profile becomes a memorial, and your legacy contact has the ability to write a pinned post for it, respond to new friend requests, and update your Facebook profile picture.
Although your legacy contact will not be able to log into your account or read your messages, they will be able to download a copy of your Facebook data.
How can I Store my Passwords?
If you are the type of person that is extremely organized, you might consider making a list of all your usernames and passwords and keeping it in a safe place. However, this requires constant updates of the list when you change your passwords or open new online accounts.
Thankfully, for the individuals that do not want to deal with the hassle of updating their manual list constantly or that do not have the time to manually update the list there are password manager service apps that make your life easier. Apps like “Keeper” and “1Password” can store all your important online information, including passwords, software licenses, social media, iCloud account, and credit card information. These apps allow you to designate an emergency access contact that will be able to access your account when you pass. These apps make your life easier by storing all your information in one place. This way your designate emergency contact will have everything they need after you pass.
In this digital age that we all live in, it is crucial that we provide our loved ones not only with information on our physical possessions and money, but also on our digital assets that contain such sensitive and private information.
