Digital Footprints: Imagine that while preparing for the funeral of a loved one, you want to play their favorite tune. But when you try to open their Spotify account, then you feel that you do not know the login information. His playlist, favorite songs and annual precious digital moments like ‘rapped’ have now lost. We usually talk about assets, money or other material things in heritage, but in today’s digital age, the online data we left is becoming equally important. This is called digital heritage which has now become an emotional responsibility but not only a technical issue.
Digital heritage
Digital heritage can be divided into two parts including digital properties and digital appearance. Digital properties include things that have an economic price such as website domains, online business, cryptocurrency, digital files, and monetized social media accounts. Access to these often becomes complicated due to password or security rules.
There are things that have emotional significance in digital presence such as social media profiles, photos, videos, emails, chats and memories saved in clouds. Nowadays more things have been added to it such as data extracted from health apps, your location history, search pattern and even virtual avatars created by AI. All these information reflects our choice, habits and lifestyle deeply.
Why is the after -digital world planning necessary
Just as we make a will for our property, it is also necessary to plan on digital property. If this is not done, then your loved ones will not get access to your memories.
How to plan digital heritage
Make a list of all your digital accounts and assets, including their username and password.
Decide which information to erase, what to keep handle and whom to share.
Use a password manager, so that your login details are safe and can be shared when needed.
Appoint a trusted person as a digital executive, who can fulfill your digital desire – it will be useful for taking legal advice for this.
Use legacy options made by companies like Facebook, Google and Apple such as Google Inactive Account Manager or Apple’s digital legacy setting.
What if digital heritage is not planned
In such cases it becomes very difficult to access accounts and data. Many times the conditions of the companies are such that only the account holder gets access, and after their death, documents such as the death certificate are required to remove data or remove profiles. When no such plan is present, family members often struggle to find passwords in older documents, use recovery tools or find their online marks.
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