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As the digital age continues to proliferate every aspect of our lives, the concept of a ‘Digital Legacy’ has become integral for individuals and businesses alike. A Digital Legacy constitutes all the digital assets, social accounts, subscriptions, and any digital property one owns or is authorised to use online.
The purpose of this guide is to illuminate the importance of having a plan for your digital assets, and how to protect and manage them securely.
Understanding Your Digital Assets
Digital assets comprise everything you have a right to, that exist in a digital or online context. They can include your social media profiles, email accounts, online banking accounts, cryptocurrencies, domain names, any copyrighted content like blogs, pictures, music or videos you own and digital subscriptions.
Impact of Digital Legacy
The relevance of protecting and managing your digital legacy effectively is far-reaching. It extends beyond just protecting your emails and photographs. Ensuring your digital legacy remains secure and accessible can facilitate smooth handover of your possessions to your beneficiaries, as well as prevent potential cases of identity theft after death. It can also shield your loved ones from distressing experiences like relentless pop-ups of your life event from an online platform.
Initiating the Process: Inventory of Digital Assets
The first step towards protecting your digital assets is taking inventory of your digital estate and keeping records. Take note of all the online assets you own along with the specific details for access like URL, username, password, associated email, and security responses.
Including Digital Legacy in Estate Planning
After noting down all the particulars of your digital properties, the next significant step is to include these in your estate planning. It can be done by incorporating your digital assets and their details into your will.
Appointing a Digital Executor
When incorporating digital assets in your will, it is crucial to designate an ‘Digital Executor’. This person will be responsible for managing, distributing, or deleting your digital assets according to your wishes.
Considering Digital Afterlife Services
Numerous online services, like Google’s Inactive Account Manager or Facebook’s Legacy Contact, now allow users to designate a person that can access their account after death.
Laws Defining Rights to Online Assets
The law regarding digital property rights after death remains in flux. But, there has been progress, like the “Revised Uniform Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act” in the USA, which provides some control to the appointed fiduciary over digital assets of a deceased person.
Securing Digital Assets
Ensuring the security of your digital assets is as important as managing your physical wealth. Using strong, unique passwords, two-factor authentication, and secure password managers can contribute significantly.
Regular Updates & Backups
In the digital world, information and circumstances change rapidly. Ensure to regularly update your digital assets inventory and keep secure backups for easy recovery.
Privacy Considerations
While ensuring access to digital assets is crucial, it’s also important to respect privacy. Make sure to strike a balance between access and privacy, especially for personal communication, like emails or messages.
Document Your Wishes
Beyond securing and providing access to your digital legacy, it’s essential to document your wishes on how you would like them to be managed. Whether to memorialize, delete or pass on control to your loved ones, should be clearly stated.
In conclusion, digital legacy management and protection is a multi-layered process. With careful planning and a regular updating mechanism in place, you can ensure that your digital assets are protected and handled as per your wishes, contributing to a smoother transition during tough times.
