When it comes to a Digital Life, You Can Take it With You

A friend of mine passed away the weekend before Christmas from a heart attack. Joel was 51 and surrounded by friends at a neighborhood Christmas party when it happened. Everyone was surprised by his passing. I’d even hazard the guess that it surprised Joel as well.

Joel was a web developer and a network administrator by trade so, much like many of us, a lot of his life was online and protected by passwords. When he passed away he took his passwords with them — any that he hadn’t written down. This is making things complicated for his family who would have liked to be able to access his computers, or need certain types of information.

Over the last week, I’ve been wondering a lot about how online accounts might best be handled in life so that they are easily accessible to loved ones after one passes on. Obviously, it seems like it would be a best practice to store passwords in writing where they can be easily found. But, the passwords themselves need to be secure, so perhaps a safe? And, the combination would need to be known by the right people?

This doesn’t seem practical, either, because a list of passwords becomes outdated as soon as the passwords are changed online.

Surviving family members might be able to contact the online services and ask for the log in information, or ask for the passwords to be reset, but I am not sure how many companies are prepared for situations like this. Where I work, we don’t have a policy in place on how to handle requests for account information from a third party such as a spouse or relative. Do companies like Amazon, Google, or Facebook have procedures?

I’m asking mostly because I want to help Joel’s family out but first need to learn more. I’m also thinking twice about how I’ve handled my own set of online accounts and passwords. And, as a web professional, I am thinking about how best to advise others.

I’m wondering if anybody else has experienced the challenge of reclaiming online accounts after their loved one had passed away. What would you recommend to someone else who is running up against the same thing?

Web and security professionals, what steps would you recommend to those of us who want to ensure that our data would be accessible to the right people after our death?