Planning for our death

PLANNING FOR OUR DEATH

As the saying goes, there is no avoiding death and taxes. This page is not about taxes.

Step 1 is deciding who to trust. Then:

Give the trusted person(s) access to your primary email account(s)
Tell the trusted person(s) how to log into your devices (desktop computer, laptop, tablet and/or phone)
Give them the passwords for your financial services, be they apps or websites.
Apple users should provide their trusted people with both their AppleID userid/password and their iPhone unlock code.

If your passwords are stored on paper, xerox the paper and give the copy to your trusted person. Of, if you use a password manager, maybe print the passwords using the software and, again, give that to your trusted person.

Techies that own a domain and/or own a website, need to make special provisions. Both will be lost if the payments are not kept up.

PLANNING FOR CHANGE

The problem with making plans is that the world is always changing. BIG CHANGE: Perhaps you no longer trust the person you used to trust. SMALL CHANGE: passwords get changed. New accounts get created.

What to do in 10 or 20 years when you no longer trust the person you gave all your passwords to? No one wants to always be giving new accounts and updated passwords to their trusted person.

One future proof solution: If you use a Password Manager you could give your trusted person the master password. This way as new accounts are created and passwords are changed on old accounts, the trusted person does not have to know or care. This also solves the bigger issue, of no longer trusting someone. Should this happen, simply change the master password and give the new one to your newly trusted person. The no-long-trusted person will have no idea you did this, at least not for a while.

BUREAUCRACY

Some companies have a whole system created for passing the control of an account after someone has died. I can't see that any of them are worth bothering with. We all deal with many different companies, no one deals with just one tech company. It seems better to pass the critical information one way rather than deal with multiple systems and their inherent red tape.

Apple has a system called Legacy Contact, or, Digital Legacy. Two names for the name system or two different systems? I don't know and I don't care as this just proves my point, not to use either. Both Facebook and Instagram also have a "legacy contact" system. The Google entry in this arena is their inactive account manager. YouTube also allows users to assign an Inactive Account Manager. Microsoft has no such system, that I am aware of.

IOS

You can save your loved ones grief, if you share with them your iPhone passcode and/or your iCloud credentials. Apple has a complicated system, called Digital Legacy, for allowing your survivors access to most, but not all, of your data.

How to access iPhone content when someone passes away by Joseph Keller and Adam oram (June 2022). Without the passcode Apple won't (and often can't) unlock an iPhone. If you don't know your loved one's iCloud password but you do have access to their iCloud email address/userid, you could use that email to reset the password for the iCloud account.
Apple Digital Legacy was introduced in iOS 15.2 and macOS Monterey 12.1. On iOS its at: Settings -> Your name -> Password & Security -> Legacy Contact. Your Legacy Contact(s) can be anyone, they do not need an Apple ID or an Apple device. There can be up to five contacts. Apple creates an "Access Key" which the surviving person needs to store, and not lose. To get your data, the survivor has to contact Apple, provide a death certificate and hope that Apple approves it. The survivor does not get iCloud Keychain, payment information, subscriptions, and licensed media. It strikes me as ridiculous to assume that this system will still be in place, unchanged, in 10, 20 or 30 years. Probably better to just share passwords.
Set it up: How to add a Legacy Contact for your Apple ID from Apple. How to set up a Legacy Contact on iPhone and iPad by Adam Oram (May 2022) has many screen shots of the process.
Limitations: Data that a Legacy Contact can access from Apple. Published May 2022.
Using it: How to request access to a deceased family member's Apple account from Apple (April 2022)
The iPhone Feature to Turn On Before You Die by Joanna Stern in WSJ (Dec 2021)

ARTICLES

February 21, 2025: Encryption isn't wise by Susan Bradley for Ask Woody. Quoting: "... encryption is a very bad idea if you've made no plans for someone else to ... handle getting back into a 'thing' that is encrypted. I can't tell you how many times I’ve been asked how to remove an encryption password from an Excel file that someone used to store their passwords." A short article from someone who's father is 97 and clearly thinking about these things.

June 6, 2024: You can inherit a dead relative's GOG account - if you have a court order by Kyle Orland for Ars Technica. Gaming platform GOG is ready and willing to help users transfer their accounts in the event of their death. Not so much, Steam. The take away from this is to follow the advice at the top of the page, as dealing with individual companies and their unique rules and policies just makes a bad situation worse.

December 9, 2023: Your loved ones need access to your phone once you've passed away by Jerry Hildenbrand for Android Central. The first hand experiences of a techie whose father just passed away. He suggests using the systems created by Google or Apple for handling this, I disagree.

April 22, 2023: Before You Die, Secure Your Digital Life by Julie Jargon for the Wall Street Journal (so paywall). Ms. Jargon says that it is not enough to keep a list of account passwords, because you might forget to update it. Still, this is the far better option than all the other stuff in this article. It starts with how a few password managers let you designate someone to get your passwords when you die. To me, this is too complicated. And, you may change password manager software in the future. It is far better to write the down the master password for the password manager. The article also discusses "legacy contacts" for Apple, Google and Facebook. Here too, these systems strike me as way too complicated for someone grieving to deal with. Again, better to just write down the passwords somewhere that your loved ones know where they are.

May 8, 2023: How do social media platforms deal with dead users' accounts? by Diego Mendoza for Semafor.

May 8, 2023: Planning for the final digital divide by Susan Bradley for AskWoody.com. This is behind a paywall.

December 28, 2022: 6 easy fixes to avoid tech headaches in 2023 by Heather Kelly for the Washington Post. Topics in the article include preparing for your death.