While death is not the subject to talk about, have you ever thought about what could happen to your digital data after you are gone?
Will your social media accounts sit in an anonymous state until someone deletes them years later?
Documenting your wishes for an online account can help ease the heartache of the one you love. Thus, determining digital planning is one of the important aspects to consider now.
If you are old enough to arrange for a will, then your executor can help you assess your digital assets and develop a digital asset management plan for the afterlife.
Well, your friends or family can’t access the data when you are gone. At least one trusted person needs to know the details. Choose one person you can share your passwords and other details with comfortably.
A digital legacy helps one understand what actions to take on certain accounts, such as Facebook, Instagram, and emails.
Choosing a person to handle and manage your social media accounts, manage all your banking statements, guaranteed loans, pending payments, emails, and other important stuff.
What is Digital Legacy?
Digital Legacy is the information available online about a person post-death. It can include any type of information, emails, or internet accounts of any kind. In can include more documents like:
- Utility accounts
- Bank accounts
- Social media accounts
- Streaming services
- Website domains and access
- Customer accounts on Amazon
- Cloud storage accounts
And your Google Drive alone is the treasure. Thus, you might imagine leaving a digital legacy is important and securing it too.
Why Having a Digital Legacy is Important?
It is important to grant access to your family in advance because your family might not get legal access to your accounts and, therefore, may miss important information.
Your family and acquaintances will have access to important information and determine the right decision.
For creating a digital legacy, you will need to include instructions on how to use your account passwords and what you want to happen to your accounts after you die.
How To Arrange for Your Digital Legacy?
Planning for digital assets is akin to planning for other precious belongings. This may require some effort on your part, but it can ensure data security in the end.
Here is what you can do to plan and arrange your digital legacy:
1) Decide important assets
Choosing the assets, you wish to plan for is the first step. Individuals care little about the afterlife, and thus some accounts like shopping accounts won’t be of use to anyone.
While deciding on the important assets, keep in mind the below points:
- Files that your family would like to keep as memories
- Any documents that may help them sort out digital estate issues
- Any social media activities that are critical to your life
Think of the things that could help your family. Can they contact anyone who can help them resolve property or estate issues quickly? Are there any pending payments to make?
2) Analyze the ownership policies
It is fairly straightforward to determine who owns your technology devices, like pen drives, phones, computers, and USB sticks. The ownership rights may depend on-
- Country’s ownership laws
- Laws of the website’s original country
- Terms and conditions of the website after you sign-up
For any assets that you store online, like images on the Cloud. If these documents are important and you want to grant access to your family, analyze the ownership rights.
Apple, for example, prevents the transfer of any kind of information once a device has been abandoned. If you want to avoid this, make an “offline” copy and save it to a physical drive.
3) Plan digital legacy for your social media accounts
While few websites have policies regarding account closure after death. Share your profile with your family and friends if you have an active social media presence.
Some social media sites offer users the freedom to choose what they want to happen with their social media accounts. For this, check around the social media pages and their settings and explore the options available.
Or, if you don’t use a social media account, then you can close it once and for all.
4) Secure your passwords
While you might want your family to access your important accounts, recording and saving your passwords are equally important.
Thus, it is important to save your passwords. How will you do that?
You can do so by:
- Splitting your passwords and keeping both on separate devices.
- Another option for safeguarding your password is setting up a password manager. It requires you to keep your data up to date.
Most services require a two-step process, i.e., sending you an email to verify whether you or someone else logged into your account.
As you take inventory of your digital assets, log in to every account and change passwords. Changing your passwords frequently is important. Creating your file will help you make it symbolic and easy to remember.
5) Appoint a digital executor
In today’s world, you must entrust a person with sharing the information. For example, if you hold cryptocurrencies, your beloved wouldn’t be able to access them in the absence of the correct key.
Thus, you need to appoint a digital executor to manage and regulate your digital assets, like deleting, converting, changing, or managing different accounts and profiles. In the same way, you would like to list your financial assets as well.
Thus, you can hire a digital executor and financial advisor to manage your digital accounts well and take control of your finances as well. Well, not every country hosts it. Check for one in your country. The precise wishes of the deceased are respected and thus considered by the law in most of the countries.
6) Set up Google Inactive Account Manager
Google offers this feature of inactivating accounts after a defined period of inactivity. Thus, you can set up this account by adding and verifying your phone number or email.
When you are done, click the next step, which is Add the person, and enter the email address of the person you would like to grant the account access to. Then you can set auto-reply, and this will send a message to the new email.
You can also send a response to my Contact. The last thing would be to delete the account after 3 months of inactivity.
You can choose the option of inactivating or deleting the account.
7) Online tools for digital Planning
You can plan your digital life with certain tools. In addition, these platforms can help you organize your life, like MemorizeMe and SafeBeyond, which store important details.
Alternatively, you can transfer your accounts to family or acquaintances for them to close your social media accounts or cancel any remaining payments like from private money lenders. The best part is you can use these tools to create a bucket list.
Thus, planning is something that people won’t think about, but keeping your digital assets safe and free from hackers is equally important for avoiding post-death complications. These ways will help you plan digital legacy and secure your life posthumously.