Why you need to think about your digital legacy
Why you need to think about your digital legacy
We are spending increasingly more time online – a trend the pandemic has accelerated even further in the midst of this wet and wintery ‘third lockdown’. Many of us have a more of an online footprint than we might imagine. Do you listen to music on a streaming service, have online banking or utility accounts, email accounts, a blog or website? Then there are our social media accounts. The potential value of our digital assets is rising, and the amount of money we are spending online is rising.
You may want to think about what would happen if you were seriously ill or died.
The law surrounding digital property once someone dies has failed to keep up with modern life; the law on digital assets in the UK is practically non-existent. In 2019 only 45% of adults in the UK had made a will for their physical assets, but there is no definition for online assets, and they have no legal protection. You may only have a license to use these services with no automatic entitlement to pass on your login and password details to your heirs. Trading in facebook accounts is becoming a big business. Inactive accounts or those who used to belong to someone who has died are bought and sold online, and messages on social media accounts from someone who has died can be deeply upsetting for the family left behind.
The Digital Legacy Association offers guidance about how to manage what happens to your online presence after you die and how to leave your accounts accessible to the right people.
Here are 10 tips and things to be aware of.
Leave instructions in your will that outline your privacy preferences after you die, but bear in mind your will is a public document so don’t publish any specifics.
Instead, make a Social Media Will Template with details of your online accounts, username and passwords, how you would like the account to be managed, eg closed, deactivated or memorialised and who you would like to be responsible.
If you have a security password on a mobile phone or any other electronic device, you may want to think about how best to manage your passwords and who to share these details with.
Payment systems such as Paypal or cryptocurrency accounts may continue to hold onto money in your account if this isn’t addressed in your Social Media Will Template.
Facebook and Instagram let users ask for a page of the deceased person to be memorialised, and you can nominate a legacy contact ( from a list of friends ) in advance to deactivate your account
Google allows you to choose an executor to manage your photo and Youtube accounts if your account has been inactive for a certain period. It gives the person permission to download photos and documents but can’t guarantee that personal data is completely removed from their system.
Apple will let an ID be passed on if it is expressed in a will which means you could preserve photos – but ahead of that set up a family sharing on your cloud server or laptop.
A twitter account can be deactivated on behalf of someone who has died, but in order to do this the twitter username, a death certificate and a signed statement will be required.
Ensure that banks and online banking services are told about your death, and they will need to have a copy of your death certificate.
However, the NHS deletes your medical records after ten years!