Digital legacy planning: passwords, accounts, and what happens when you die

The average person now leaves behind hundreds of online accounts: email, banking, photos, subscriptions, social media, crypto wallets, cloud drives. Almost none of them are covered by a traditional will — and without your passwords, your family faces months of support tickets, death certificates, and locked doors at the worst possible time. Digital legacy planning is simply making sure the right people can reach the right things when you no longer can.

What happens to your accounts by default

• Email and cloud storage — providers like Google and Apple offer inactive-account or legacy-contact settings, but only if you configured them; otherwise access requires court orders.
• Messaging apps — WhatsApp deletes any account after about 120 days of inactivity, and its chats stay locked behind the phone's passcode. Here's what happens to your WhatsApp when you die.
• Banking and finance — accounts freeze until probate completes. Family often doesn't even know which banks, brokers, or insurers to contact.
• Photos and personal files — frequently lost forever. No password, no recovery.
• Subscriptions — keep billing until someone finds and cancels them.
• Crypto — without the seed phrase, the assets are simply gone. There is no support line.

A practical digital legacy checklist

1. Use a password manager. One vault, one master password. This turns "hundreds of accounts" into a single secret to pass on.
2. Write down what exists. A short inventory — banks, insurance policies, email accounts, crypto, where the photos live — matters as much as passwords. Families can't claim what they don't know about.
3. Set the built-in options. Google's Inactive Account Manager, Apple's Legacy Contact, Facebook's memorialization settings.
4. Plan how the master password reaches your family. This is the critical step — and the hardest to do safely.
5. Add the personal layer. Beyond access, leave actual words: guidance, goodbyes, wishes. See how to send messages after death.

The hand-off problem

Writing the master password in your will makes it visible to the legal process and impossible to update. Handing it to someone now means it is no longer a secret, and it goes stale every time you change it. A safety-deposit box requires someone to know it exists and get access to it.

This is exactly what a dead man's switch service solves. With Final Saying, you write an encrypted message — "the vault export is in X, the master password is Y, the crypto seed phrase is with Z" — and it stays private and editable while you are alive. Scheduled check-ins confirm you are still here; only if you stop responding to every check-in and reminder is the message delivered, by email or WhatsApp, to the people you chose. It is free to start, and a one-time €29 payment covers lifetime access — no subscription that could lapse and break your plan.

Do it while it's easy

Digital legacy planning takes about an evening: set up the password manager, write the inventory, configure legacy contacts, and store the hand-off message. It costs little or nothing, and it is one of the most concrete acts of care you can leave behind — clear instructions in your own words, instead of locked accounts and guesswork.