What happens to your digital accounts when you die?

Most of us have dozens, sometimes hundreds, of online accounts. Email. Social media. Cloud storage. Streaming services. Online banking. Shopping profiles. Password managers. And almost none of us have told anyone what to do with them when we die.

This isn’t a morbid thought experiment. It’s a practical problem. When someone dies, their digital life doesn’t disappear, it just becomes inaccessible, confusing, and sometimes deeply distressing for the people they’ve left behind.

Here’s what actually happens, and what you can do about it.

What happens by default

When you die without leaving any instructions, your digital accounts fall into a kind of limbo. Each platform has its own policy, and most are designed around the assumption that you’ll always be there to log in.

Email accounts at Gmail, Outlook, and others will eventually be deleted after a period of inactivity — typically between 9 and 24 months. Before that, no one can access them without your password, and most providers won’t hand over access even to family members, even with a death certificate.

Social media profiles on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn can be memorialised (turned into a tribute page) or removed, but only if someone knows to request it, and only if they can prove they’re an authorised contact. Without that, your profile just sits there, occasionally surfacing in other people’s memories or sending automated birthday reminders for years.

Cloud storage, Google Drive, iCloud, Dropbox, all contain photos, documents, and files that may be irreplaceable. Without access credentials, that content is simply gone.

Subscriptions keep charging until someone cancels them. Streaming services, software, gym apps. They don’t pause because you’ve died. Your family may spend months untangling these.

The five most important steps to take now

1. Write down your accounts. Not passwords, just a list of what exists. Email, banking, social media, cloud storage, subscriptions. Your family can’t handle what they don’t know about.

2. Set up legacy contacts where they exist. Facebook, Google, and Apple all offer some form of legacy contact or inactive account manager. This lets you designate someone who can access or close your account after you die. It takes five minutes and makes an enormous difference.

3. Store credentials securely and accessibly. A password manager is the right tool, but only if someone else can get into it when you’re gone. Consider a master passphrase written on paper and stored with your will, or a trusted family member who knows the recovery method.

4. Include digital accounts in your will. Your solicitor may not think to ask, but it’s worth including a clause that names someone to handle your digital estate, and that references where your instructions are stored.

5. Keep it updated. A list written in 2019 is probably missing half your current accounts. Review it once a year. When you renew your home insurance is a good prompt.

“The greatest gift you can give the people you love is not having to guess. Write it down. Store it somewhere they’ll find it. Tell them it exists.”

What about the law?

In the UK, digital assets don’t automatically pass to your next of kin the way physical property does. Most accounts are governed by terms of service agreements, which typically state that the account is personal and non-transferable. This means that even if you leave your password in your will, the platform may still refuse access to your family.

Some countries are beginning to pass digital estate legislation. The US has the Revised Uniform Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act (RUFADAA) in many states. The UK is still catching up. For now, the best protection is explicit consent through each platform’s own tools, legacy contacts, inactive account managers, and documented preferences.

The emotional side

There’s something most guides don’t mention: what your digital life means to the people you leave behind.

Your photos. Your voice notes. Your saved messages. For many families, access to these things is a form of grief, not just practical necessity, but genuine comfort. Being able to see your parent’s camera roll, or read the last message they sent, or find the recipe they always made at Christmas. These things matter enormously.

Conversely, accounts that are inaccessible become sources of pain. The inbox that can’t be opened. The photos that are locked away in a cloud account. The years of messages that simply disappear.

Planning your digital estate isn’t just about tying up loose ends. It’s about deciding what you want to leave behind, and making sure the people you love can actually find it.

What to put in your AllSet vault

Your digital life section in AllSet is designed to hold exactly this kind of information. Not passwords, but the map that helps your family navigate:

• A list of your most important accounts and which ones to prioritise
• Who your legacy contacts are (and confirmation that you’ve set them up)
• Where your password manager is, and how to access it
• Any specific wishes about social media i.e do you want your profiles memorialised or deleted?
• Subscriptions that should be cancelled, and any that should continue

It doesn’t have to be exhaustive. It just has to be enough. Enough that someone who loves you, in a difficult moment, can find what they need without having to guess.