Estate
Your digital legacy: making sure your family can get into your accounts
If you died tomorrow, could your spouse or kid get into your phone, your email and your password manager? For most people the answer is no, and that locks them out of everything else: the bank, the photos, the subscriptions that keep billing. Three settings and one document fix it in an hour.
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The hour, step by step
- Apple Legacy Contact or Google Inactive Account Manager (both, if you use both).
- Password manager emergency access for your spouse or one child.
- Facebook legacy contact; Instagram memorialization request instructions in the letter.
- The letter: phone passcode, computer login, where the will and the originals are, who the emergency contact is. Signed and dated, kept with the will.
Why it matters for scams
A dead person's unattended email and social accounts are a scammer's favorite tool: they are used to message relatives "from" the deceased. Legacy settings let the family close or memorialize them quickly.
Questions people ask
- Should I just write my passwords down?
- A list goes stale in a month. Emergency access to the password manager stays current automatically. Write down only the master password and the phone passcode, in the sealed letter.