Digital Life After Death - What You Need to Know

In the world of digital technology, there is hardly an aspect of your life that remains untouched by the internet. With digital interactions like personal conversations, online shopping, social media accounts, online banking, and payments, we are constantly creating and adding to our digital assets.

Many of these channels become a mine of personal and visual information and carry a variety of risks such as identity theft, frauds, and another misuse. Digital experts, therefore, suggest not to ignore these assets and to view carefully the possibilities of what would happen to them after a person’s death. Some of their recommendations include the following:

Register Of Digital Assets

The first thing to do is to identify all the digital assets a person has created and separate those that can cause damage if left unattended. Some such assets to look at include:

• Bank accounts
• Online trading accounts
• Payment apps
• Smartphone information
• Email Accounts
• Apple/Google accounts
• Social media profile
• Data and information saved in the cloud
• Debit/credit card
• Websites

There will be many other areas of digital presence depending on an individual’s job profile and social networking habits. It is important that all such assets are documented, including where the individual has been anonymous.

End of Life Planning

Digital asset planning needs to be treated like physical and financial asset planning so as not to leave the family members groping in the dark after a person’s demise. With digital presence is created a bank of passwords. A written record of these passwords is important to enable the family members to deal with digital life appropriately. It may be necessary to destroy all emails, information from personal platforms, closing bank accounts etc.

The family would be saved of hassles if it can inform friends, relatives, professional contacts about the demise of a person. This is possible if the all such information is recorded at one place and made known to the family or a trustee.

To learn more about the services we at Tindall Funeral Home offer, contact us via phone at (315) 468-5521 or though our online form.