I heard a number of stories of people passing away, and their loved ones have to figure out how to navigate their digital “estate”. Things like email credentials, bank accounts, crypto wallets, logins for personal devices, etc. For example, I have a good friend whose husband passed away unexpectedly, and she couldn’t get Apple to unlock his laptop for months, until she provided a death certificate and jumped through additional hoops.

I fell down a rabbit hole of checklists, methods, and technology, and was curious what other people were doing to leave digital assets behind. I’m looking for something that will be privacy-oriented, but still provide access to people who may not be very tech-savvy.

What do other people do? Especially from a technology perspective?

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My uncle passed unexpectedly a few years ago. He didn't have any family nearby so I went down with my dad to sort through his shit. This man had an entire spreadsheet with every single account username and password he had printed out. I cannot tell you how much time it saved me. He had a ton of accounts with monthly payments (mostly porn) that I was able to cancel immediately, and we were able to access all his banking stuff.

He also had a hard-drive full of meticulously organized porn, which was depressing to have to wipe to be honest because he had clearly put a lot of time and effort into it.

I dont recommend just a spreadsheet like that in your house tbh but ever since, I created a password manager with one primary password that my partner knows where to find if anything were to happen to me.

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