Although the online age has been around for more than two decades by now, we are still in the early stages of truly understanding the best methods of caring for the digital assets of a deceased person. The Internet and its trends change so quickly that the law has difficulty keeping up. Not only does the average person have multiple social media accounts, but there are online banking accounts, online financial planning and management services, email accounts, utilities, and so many more. So what happens with these digital assets when someone dies?
Document Your Accounts and Their Passwords
The first step is to ensure all digital assets have been accounted for. Possibly the easiest way to do this is to create a chart or some kind of document that you can save and repeatedly update as needed. This could be hand-written or typed on a computer. However, keep this in a secure place. That may be a secure cloud storage solution, a flash drive, or sequestered in a secure place on your computer that requires a password. Make sure to document the name of the website, the username, the password, and the URL if there happens to be a specific or special URL required for logging in. You may even want to put a date on the document to better keep track of when the document was last updated.
Ensure a Personal Representative Has Access
Once you have your online accounts documented, ensure that someone has access to the document or list you’ve created. You can write into your estate plans how you would like for your digital assets to be treated, from having your representative continue to monitor and operate accounts as a sort of memorial to having your representative close the accounts after a certain period of time has passed. Some accounts, such as utilities, should simply be closed once final bills have been paid or ownership transferred. You could even ask your representative to print or preserve your content from a site and then close the account. But the most important thing is to make sure someone trustworthy has access to the documentation you’ve created so they can fulfill your wishes.
Why Should I Care About My Online Assets?
Over 9 million people a year are victim to identity theft in some way1. Leaving online accounts open or unmonitored leaves them vulnerable to criminals who may be able to hack in and steal any information you may have there, including names, photos, relationship identifiers, and so on. But why would anyone monitor the accounts of a deceased friend or family member? Let’s go with a somewhat benign example: Imagine that a criminal stole a photo of that person from their account. They could sell that photo on a stock site and then that photo may be used in any number of ways, from ads to image manipulation. Another scenario: Imagine a criminal hacked into a Facebook account, found the relationship identifiers that may have only been visible to close friends or family online, and then proceeded to attempt hacking those friends or family members.
Not only is there a risk in leaving accounts unmonitored, but if they are left undocumented, your friends or family may also be losing another part of you. That journal you kept online and never downloaded? That online scrapbook full of pictures from your vacations that never got printed? If your assets are never documented and your family doesn’t know about them, those accounts get lost, possibly for good. Your family or friends lose out on these accounts that help to tell the story of your life, and which could be downloaded or printed to allow them to keep and share for a while longer.
Documenting and then monitoring the accounts after a friend or family member becomes incapacitated or deceased creates protection for that person as well as for their friends or family. Monitoring the accounts is a good strategy; closing them down after a few weeks or months is even better as it will close the gateway and protect your loved one’s identity even after they’re gone.
1Beyer, Gerry W. and Naomi Cahn. “When You Pass On, Don’t Leave the Passwords Behind: Planning for Digital Assets.” American Bar Association. Vol 26, No 1. http://www.americanbar.org/publications/probate_property_magazine_2012/2012/january_february_2012/article_beyer_cahn_planning_for_digital_assets.html.
