Digital Legacy: What Happens to Your Online Accounts and Photos

A generation ago, sorting through a loved one's belongings meant going through drawers and filing cabinets. Today, there is another dimension entirely — one that is invisible, password-protected, and scattered across dozens of services: our digital lives.

Email inboxes full of years of correspondence. Photo libraries in the cloud with thousands of irreplaceable memories. Social media accounts that friends and family still visit after someone has gone. Online banking and investment accounts. Streaming subscriptions still charging a card. Loyalty point balances. E-commerce accounts with payment details saved.

None of this is tidied up automatically. Without some guidance, your family may struggle to access what matters — or even know what accounts exist.

Taking a little time now to think about your digital legacy is one of the most practical gifts you can give the people you leave behind.

What Counts as a Digital Asset?

It helps to think broadly. Digital assets include:

• Email accounts — often the key to resetting passwords on everything else
• Social media profiles — Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and others
• Online banking and financial accounts — including investment platforms and PayPal
• Cloud photo and video storage — iCloud, Google Photos, Amazon Photos
• Digital documents and files — stored on cloud services like Dropbox or Google Drive
• Subscriptions and memberships — anything with automatic billing
• Loyalty programs — airline miles, rewards points, store credits
• Domain names and websites — if you have ever built a website or blog

You do not need to list every account you have ever created. Focus on the ones that matter: the accounts that hold memories, money, or ongoing commitments.

The Challenge of Passwords

The most obvious problem is access. Most accounts are locked behind passwords, and most of us have dozens of them. If those passwords exist nowhere except in your head, your family may be locked out of everything.

There are several ways to approach this:

Use a password manager. Tools like 1Password, LastPass, or Bitwarden store all your passwords securely in one place. If your family knows the master password — or if you leave it in a safe, sealed envelope — they can access everything else.

Leave a written record in a safe place. Some people prefer to write down their most important passwords and keep them with other important documents, accessible to a trusted family member. This is less secure than a password manager, but far better than nothing.

Note which accounts share the same email address. Even if you do not share passwords, knowing which email address an account is registered under helps enormously — it makes resetting passwords much more straightforward.

What You Might Want to Preserve

Some digital things are worth preserving. Photos and videos of family gatherings, holidays, and milestones may exist only in the cloud. Emails between you and your children or grandchildren. A blog you wrote. A folder of documents you created over a lifetime.

Think about what you would want downloaded and kept, and who you would like to take on that task. It can be helpful to leave a note saying: "My photos are in Google Photos — please download and keep them." Or: "The folder called Family in my email has letters I'd like saved."

These are not grand instructions. They are small signposts that make a real difference.

What Should Be Closed or Memorialised

Many social media platforms offer a memorialisation option — the account remains online as a place where friends can leave messages and remember a person, but it can no longer be logged into or changed. Others prefer accounts to be closed entirely.

It is worth noting your preference, whichever it is. Facebook, for example, allows you to name a legacy contact who can manage your account after you are gone. Google has a similar tool called Inactive Account Manager.

Subscriptions and automatic payments should be cancelled. Without instructions, they may continue charging for months — a quiet source of confusion and frustration for whoever is managing your estate.

A Note on Security

Sharing passwords, even with trusted people, carries some risk. A few practical guidelines:

• Keep written passwords in a secure location — a locked drawer or a fireproof box, not taped to the bottom of your keyboard
• Tell the trusted person where to find this information, but no one else
• Review and update your records periodically, as passwords change

Starting Simply

You do not need to document every account at once. A useful starting point is to write down the three or four accounts that matter most: your primary email address, your online banking, and wherever your most important photos are stored.

From there, you can add more over time. Even a partial record is immeasurably better than none.

Final Wishes includes a section for recording important account information, digital instructions, and notes for your family — a secure, private place where these details are kept alongside your other wishes. Find out more about what you can record.