The Digital Afterlife: Protect Your Digital Legacy

With so much of life spent online, what would happen to your social media accounts and email addresses in the event of your passing? Just as you’d make arrangements for your physical assets after you’re gone, your digital information needs the same careful planning, too. A digital will makes it easier for your loved ones to take control of your digital life after you’ve passed. While you can’t spare them the heartache, you can prevent the stress of inaccessible accounts. Ghost accounts, as they’re called, are those that live on even after you’ve died. Your information is unavailable to loved ones when they need it most while also being a prime target for hackers. Take, for example, an employee’s account being used to launch a ransomware attack on his company – three months after he died. Our CEO Karim Toubba recently sat down with CNBC’s Shepard Smith and Telemundo’s Miriam Arias to discuss how to secure your digital legacy the right way. Check out the videos below. https://twitter.com/LastPass/status/1552826695140446208 https://twitter.com/LastPass/status/1557835807511269377 Anticipation is the key to your digital afterlife. Let's look at how to avoid becoming a “digital ghost” by planning ahead and preventing unnecessary stress at an already difficult time.

Step 1: Take a digital asset inventory

The first step is to take an inventory of your digital assets. Email and social media accounts are probably the first to spring to mind, but don’t forget about financial accounts (like banking or investments) and online storage (think, iCloud or Dropbox). Most people have up to 50 online accounts, so make sure you have all your (digital) bases covered, including:

• Passwords to your computers
• PIN codes or passwords for your tablets and smartphones
• Voicemail PIN
• Bank PINs and account numbers
• Loyalty cards, membership numbers, and gift cards
• Medical IDs and insurance numbers
• WiFi passcodes
• Recurring subscriptions

Step 2: Create a digital estate plan

Once you’ve taken stock of your digital assets, you’ll have to decide what you want to do with each. You want to ensure your digital legacy lives on the way you’d like while also minimizing time and effort loved ones might spend trying to recover or close accounts. A digital estate plan also ensures that your sensitive information doesn’t unknowingly fall into the hands of bad actors. Think about which accounts you want to remain open and for what purposes (say, paying a mortgage online), along with those you’d like to close after you pass.

Step 3: Designate a digital heir

Now that you have your digital inventory and an estate plan, it’s time to choose someone you trust as your digital heir. While it can be an uncomfortable topic to bring up, it’s an important one. Think about designating someone who would treat your accounts with the same care and attention as their own.     Your digital heir will want easy access to your accounts, so ensure they have all the passwords they need to carry out your plans. For example, Google has an Inactive Account Manager to let you designate up to 10 trusted contacts while Facebook lets you designate a Legacy Contact.

A digital life needs a digital legacy

Your digital afterlife depends on how you plan for it. One way to simplify and automate the process is to use a password manager to collect all this information (including documents and photos) in one secure location. And with LastPass’s Emergency Access, your digital heir will be able to request access to your accounts, either immediately or after a specified time period. From there, they'll either maintain or close those accounts based on your digital will. Life may be short, but your online accounts live on. Prepare for your digital afterlife now to ensure a secure digital legacy later.