PLANNING YOUR DIGITAL AFTERLIFE

You likely have a will drawn up to administer your property and assets in the event of your death, but do you have a plan for your digital assets and how they will be managed?

In your daily life over the past decade or two, you likely have multiple online accounts that may live on forever unless you plan ahead. Services like Google, Facebook and Twitter have protocols for cases of death, but do you have plans for your email accounts, Netflix subscription and other online services you subscribe to? Are your hard drive backups encrypted? These all need to be in your plans.

FACEBOOK

turns your account into a Memorialized Account after you pass away, and you can setup a Legacy Contact through the Security settings on your Facebook account. The Legacy Contact can also share a final message on your behalf or provide information about a memorial service, and you can also grant this person permission to download your Facebook posts and photos. The Legacy Contact cannot delete your account or login to your account.

GOOGLE

has an Inactive Account feature, you can specify in advance a‘timeout period,’ which starts after you have not logged in for a certain time period. At that point, Google will attempt to contact you by text and email,then they notify trusted contacts you have set up with a letter you have written in advance regarding the Google account. Unlike Facebook, these trusted contacts have full access to delete the account.

TWITTER

has a form that can be used to request deactivation of a deceased one’s Twitter account, but no access to the account is granted.

YAHOO

will not provide passwords or allow access to the deceased’s account, including account content such as email, but they will delete all account content after receiving documents including a letter and death certificate.

LINKEDIN

will allow anyone connected to a person confirm their death with a link to the obituary and some other information that can be filled out on an online form.

NETFLIX

You just need to sign into the account with the username and password of the account holder, and then select cancels streaming services under the Your Account menu.