The digital loose ends no one warns you about
When someone dies, their family usually expects to deal with a bank account, a house, some furniture. What they often don't expect is a phone full of locked apps, an email account that holds the key to everything else, and a list of subscriptions still quietly taking money every month.
This is a modern problem. Most of us now live a good part of our lives online: banking, photos, social media, streaming services, loyalty points, even cryptocurrency. None of that disappears when we die. It just sits there, often invisible to the people left to sort things out, until someone stumbles across a statement or a login prompt and has to start guessing.
How big a problem is this?
A 2023 survey for St James's Place found that 43% of UK adults, around 22.9 million people, have not shared the details of all their financial accounts with anyone they trust. Of those who hadn't, a third simply hadn't realised they needed to tell anyone, and 8% said they wouldn't know where to start even if they tried. Nearly four in ten people rely on memory alone to keep track of their online passwords, which is fine while they're alive to remember them and a serious problem once they're not.
The Digital Legacy Association, a UK organisation that specialises in this area, puts it simply: your digital legacy is "the digital information that is available about someone following their death." That covers far more than most people think about in advance: online banking and investment platforms, email (which is often the master key to resetting every other account), social media, cloud photo storage, gaming accounts, loyalty schemes, subscriptions, and digital or crypto assets.
Why this causes real problems for families
A few things make this harder than it should be.
No one knows what exists. Unlike a filing cabinet or a shelf of paperwork, digital accounts leave few physical traces. If nobody knows an account exists, it can't be closed, claimed or passed on. Photos stored only in one cloud account, for example, can be lost permanently if no one can get in.
Access isn't the same as entitlement. Even with a password, family members are often not legally entitled to log in and act on someone else's behalf. Most platforms' terms and conditions prohibit account sharing, and some hold firm on this even when a grieving relative has the password in hand.
Subscriptions keep running. Streaming services, apps, cloud storage and other recurring payments often continue until someone actively finds and cancels them, sometimes for months.
It becomes another task on an already long list. Digital accounts get triaged behind the more obviously urgent jobs, such as registering the death and contacting the bank, and can end up forgotten entirely.
What a little preparation looks like
None of this needs to be complicated. It just needs to be written down somewhere sensible, before it's needed.
- Make a list of what exists. Not passwords necessarily, just the accounts themselves: which bank, which email provider, which subscriptions, which social media platforms. A simple table works well: account, provider, and what should happen to it (close, transfer or keep).
- Decide what should happen to each one. Broadly, digital accounts fall into three categories after a death: closing (subscriptions, shopping accounts), freezing or transferring (banking, insurance, utilities), and keeping or memorialising (photos, email, social media with sentimental value). Deciding this in advance saves a lot of second-guessing later.
- Use a password manager, or at least one secure master note. This is far safer, and far more manageable, than trying to remember dozens of passwords or writing them on scraps of paper.
- Tell someone you trust where to find it all, and how to access it if needed. Several major platforms, including Google and Apple, offer a "legacy contact" or "inactive account manager" feature that lets you nominate someone in advance, worth setting up directly in your account settings.
- Keep this information separate from your will. A will becomes a public document once probate is granted, so it is not the place to list passwords or account details. A private, updated note kept with your other important papers, and mentioned to your executor, is the safer approach.
Why this matters
Sorting out someone's digital life after they've gone can take weeks of guesswork, form-filling and being passed between customer service departments, all while grieving. A short list, decided calmly in advance, turns that into a straightforward job for whoever is left to do it.
This is one of the problems that led me to set up An Ordered Life. I'd seen, more than once, how much time and stress could have been saved with a single page of notes.
This article is general guidance, not legal or financial advice. Platforms' own rules on account access after death vary and change over time, so always check directly with the provider concerned.
References
St James's Place, 22.9 million Brits overlook digital legacy, failing to share details of financial accounts
Digital Legacy Association, What is a digital legacy?
GOV.UK, What to do after someone dies
Information Commissioner's Office, ico.org.uk: guidance on data protection, including the position on data belonging to someone who has died
