Protecting your online accounts after you die

Planning what happens to your assets when you die is expected; you’ve probably at least given it a passing thought. But in today’s digital age, things have got a little more complex. With so much of our lives lived online, almost everyone creates a digital footprint. This includes social media accounts, bank account log-ins, music collections, and family photos.

So, as our activities increasingly leave the real world for the digital, it’s essential to establish what happens with our ‘digital assets.

Defining Digital Assets

A digital asset is anything you can open online, like social media, email, bank accounts, photo sharing, and websites or domains you own. But, more widely, it also includes anything you’ve stored online or on your computers: documents, videos, photographs, music files and almost everything else you’ve created and stored digitally.

Access Issues

Think about what you do on your computer and online generally. So much will likely be accessed through a password that only you know. This is particularly problematic with social media accounts, which invariably contain personal information, including images. Losing this would be a shame.

Certain digital assets, like any digital intellectual property, cryptocurrency or online payment accounts, are worth money. However, you might want to leave those monetary assets to your loved ones, so provision should be made in your Will.

Other ‘assets’ are more complicated. For example, you don’t ‘own’ anything purchased through your iTunes, so it has no value, but it could be something people can enjoy. Domain names can be particularly problematic. If you die just before the fees become due and no one can pay, that domain name (along with whatever it was used for) could fail. Domain names can be worth money and intrinsic to a business venture.

In short, there is a high chance your digital assets will either be lost or their benefits unrealised without the correct planning.

Protecting Online Assets

Whether your digital assets have monetary or sentimental value, you should specify to whom these assets pass on your death.

With a solid digital inventory and letter of instructions, your family/executors can wind down or use those assets according to your instructions.

Digital Inventory

It’s central to protecting your digital assets, clearly identifying and recording them so your family can access them later.

You will first need to establish whether the asset is truly an asset; for example, it may only be a license that cannot be passed to another user.

Your instructions (including your list) should be stored securely somewhere. You can use the paid services to keep your passwords and usernames in an online safety deposit box. These details can be made available to a nominated person following your death.

The main issue with both approaches is that you must keep all your passwords updated on the digital inventory.

Complications

The law can complicate matters.

Whether or not you can pass on ownership of your digital assets will depend on the terms and conditions of each agreement. Unfortunately, there isn’t a standard set of rules for this, so these should be checked. You will need to make sure this information is up-to-date.

Our Advice

You might want to tie this all up legally by adding a digital assets clause to your Will. Those digital assets with monetary value and intellectual property rights attached to them should not only appear in the letter. Still, they should also be the subject of a specific legacy in the Will.

With this, you can even let your family decide who should benefit from your digital assets or specify who gets what.