Plan for what will happen to your “Digital Presence” when you die.
It is way more than answering the question: “What happens to my Facebook account?”
How to Begin Organizing your Digital & Online Assets, through identification, planning and secure storage, will contribute to an effective Estate Plan, and enable your Legacy to continue.
Historically, a person’s estate has consisted of a Will, Trusts, Power of Attorney appointment, Life Insurance policies, and any property that a person owned, including financial accounts. Paper documentation, was usually collected in a folder or binder in a person’s office, safe, or desk drawer, so the family could easily find them after the person died. Any items not included in this primary bundle were identified through paper statements that arrived in the mail: bank statements, bills, and account updates, for example.
Today, many of the records documenting an estate may be entirely Digital, i.e “in the cloud.” While paper versions of formal legal documents may still be saved in a person’s home or with an attorney, many financial, business, personal, and administrative documents may exist online. Many people manage their finances, business, and personal lives online, yet very few have worked to organize or centralized those accounts. This can make finding, managing and distributing these assets difficult after the person has died, and can lead to confusion for family members, denial of access, and even an inability to locate the accounts or information.
Be clear about what to do with your accounts. Some people want them canceled immediately; others want the accounts to survive as a legacy, allowing access to emails and photos for family in lieu of physical photo albums and scrapbooks. Your executor will have no way of knowing how you feel unless you spell it out in advance.
The U.S. General Services Administration recommends people set up a “Digital Will,” review the privacy policies and terms and conditions of each website on which they have a presence and stipulate in their traditional will that the “Digital Executor” get a copy of the death certificate. You will want to make sure that the people that need to know how and where your digital assets are stored, actually know how to access the information. Generally, it is a good idea to relay this information to 1 or 2 people who you trust, your spouse, adult children or a “Digital Executor.” A Digital Executor is a person that you appoint to manage your digital assets after you die. Choose your Digital Executor carefully. This may be the same person in charge of the rest of your estate, or not, depending on their comfort level of technology.
It can be a big job at the beginning, however, after you have a process in place continuing backup will be easier.
Step One: Identify Your Digital Asset Types:
1. Computers and devices: content from desktops, tablets and mobile phones. Including external hard drives or flash drives, digital music players, e-readers, digital cameras, and other digital devices.
2 . Email content from incoming, stored and sent messages.
3. Social network channels: content from social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Pinterest, LinkedIn.
4. Any information or data that is stored electronically, whether stored online, in the cloud, or on a physical device. Online business content from online stores, including eBay and Etsy, and domain names, websites and blogs that you may manage. Intellectual property, including copyrighted materials, trademarks, and any code you may have written and own.
5. Photos and multimedia content from Shutterfly, Snapfish, Flickr, Instagram, and other photo-sharing sites.
6. Financial accounts, including content from PayPal, online banking sites, online investment accounts and bill-payment services.
Step Two: Inventory Your Content by Device:
Make a thorough inventory of the specific content you want to preserve on your computers, mobile devices, email, social websites, and other important online accounts, by doing the following:
1. List the physical location of each device and file(s) you want to preserve.
2. Provide the physical location, username and password access, name of your intended heir, and your final wishes for each asset.
For a template to help inventory your assets, go to: www.yourdigitalafterlife.com/resources.
Step Three: Backup and Store Your Digital Data in a secure but accessible location.
It is essential to back up your computer and all personal devices to properly safeguard your data. Storing your digital content in more than one place helps keep it safe in case of theft, fire, or accidents. You can easily automate the backup process to occur regularly and automatically. Back up methods for hard drives and personal devices include using the following:
Storage media, like CDs and DVDs
Optical media
Additional hard drives, then using software to synchronize all of your hard drives together to store large collections of digital files
Online backup services that work with your existing Internet connection, including:
www.mozy.com
www.idrive.com
www.sosonlinebackup.com
www.carbonite.com
www.sugarsync.com
How to Begin Organizing your Digital and Online Assets For When You Die.
References: Passare.com
http://www.everplans.com/articles/how-to-create-a-digital-estate-plan
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10000872396390443713704577601524091363102
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