Your Digital Estate
You may have a will, but have you thought about your digital estate? Your digital footprint is probably all over the Internet. You might want to appoint a digital executor to take care of your online reputation and if something happens to you.
Where do you begin?
Take and inventory of all your computers, mobile devices, and digital accounts. This is probably a good idea to do anyway. Here is a sample list of digital assets to give some guidance:
- Email Accounts
- Any password services
- Social Media like LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram
- Storage and File Sharing like Dropbox iCloud
- Payment Programs such as Venmo and PayPal
- Rewards including Airline and Hotel Programs
- Shopping Services Amazon Prime
- Video and Music Services Spotify, Pandora, Netflix
- Books on Audible or Kindle
- Online Dating Accounts such as Bumble and Match
- Virtual Currency like Bitcoin
This is an opportune time to change the passwords to these at this point. From here, find someone that you trust and let them know where to find the list. Make sure they are comfortable with this responsibility. One option is to place these in a safe deposit box. Common sense hopefully tells you this list should not be in a public place. I would review this information at least once a year to make sure passwords are current and all the digital presence is captured.
Technology is becoming more of a daily presence in our lives and will continue this trend. Ensure that you stay on top of this.