Almost everything we own a copy of now lives online: the photos, the documents, the accounts, the subscriptions, the memories. That is convenient while we are here to manage it, and a genuine headache for a family who suddenly has to. Preparing your digital life is not morbid and it does not take a weekend. It is a handful of sensible steps that mean, if the worst ever happened, the people you love would not be locked out of your life. Here is where to start.
Start with the master key: your email
Your main email is the single most important account, because it can reset almost everything else. Give it a strong, unique password, turn on two-factor authentication, and make sure a trusted person could reach it in an emergency, whether through a password manager’s emergency access or another route you control. Sort this one thing and you have done the most valuable part.
Know what is actually there
You cannot prepare what you cannot see. Make a simple list of the accounts that matter: banking and anything financial, photos and cloud storage, social media, subscriptions and shopping. You do not need every login recorded, just the ones that hold money, memories or would cause hassle if missed. Our guide on making a list of digital accounts walks through a quick way to do it.
Set up the legacy tools
Several big platforms let you plan ahead, and it takes minutes:
- Apple lets you nominate a Legacy Contact.
- Google has an Inactive Account Manager.
- Facebook lets you set a legacy contact and choose memorialisation.
Setting these up now spares your family from having to prove entitlement from scratch later, which is slow and often distressing.
Decide who can reach what, and how
The goal is not to hand everything over today. It is to make sure the right person could reach the right things if they ever needed to. A password manager with emergency access handles the logins. A place like FamilySafe handles the bigger picture: which accounts exist, the documents attached and who should be able to see each thing, shared on your terms.
Write down the wishes, not just the logins
Finally, a few words about what you would want. Which accounts to close, which to preserve, any photos that matter, any messages you would want passed on. It does not need to be formal. It just needs to exist, somewhere findable, so your family is not guessing.
Download the free guide to prepare your digital life at your own pace.
Frequently asked questions
What is the most important thing to sort first?
Your main email, because it can reset most of your other accounts. Secure it and make sure a trusted person could reach it in an emergency.
Can my family just log in with my passwords?
Even with the passwords, logging in can breach a platform’s terms. Use the official legacy tools and a password manager’s emergency access instead.
Do I need to write everything down?
Not everything. Record the accounts that hold money or memories, set up the legacy tools and note your wishes. That covers the vast majority of what a family would need.
Sources
- Apple, Google and Meta legacy and memorialisation help pages
- National Cyber Security Centre: password managers
