Digital assets have become an increasing challenge for estate trustees to manage. Testators are rightfully concerned with protecting their privacy while alive and are apprehensive about sharing credentials with their named estate trustee. Even if those credentials are written down, passwords and accounts are prone to change. Here are some tools that can be used to help address these concerns:
Apple Legacy Contact
Last year, I wrote about what steps an estate trustee can take to compel Apple to unlock an iPhone or Mac (spoiler alert, Apple won’t do it). What you can do before this becomes a problem for your estate trustee is set a Legacy Contact on your Apple account. A Legacy Contact will be granted access to a testator’s Apple ID after death, but only after presenting the generated access key and a copy of the death certificate. This provides some comfort that a Legacy Contact won’t have access to sensitive data while a person is alive.
Password Manager Emergency Access
Re-using passwords across multiple sites or writing passwords down poses a considerable security risk. One way of mitigating these risks is by using a password manager. A password manager works by setting one “master password” protected by two-factor authentication. Once you enter your master password, the password manager stores all your passwords and auto-fills them from your browser or phone. A password manager allows you to use a unique, strong password for every website.
LastPass is a popular password manager, but there are many to choose from. LastPass has a feature called Emergency Access. Emergency Access allows you to grant access to your password vault to another LastPass user. The user logs in and requests access to your vault in an emergency. Access is granted only when you approve the request. By setting a wait time when choosing emergency contacts, you are provided with the opportunity to deny the request if there is no real emergency.
Some significant benefits of this method are that you are constantly updating passwords in your password manager, so these credentials will be up to date. These services are also under constant attack, so the security mechanisms are about as secure as one can get these days.
A Dead Man’s Switch, Such As Google’s Inactive Account Manager
A Dead Man’s Switch allows for an email to be sent to an emergency contact after a set period of time after a user doesn’t respond to an email confirming that they are still alive, or after a period of inactivity on an account. The emergency email can contain information such as passwords or other instructions. Google offers an Inactive Account Manager, which allows users to share parts of their account data or notify someone if they’ve been inactive for a certain period of time. This could include contents of the mailbox or Google Drive that may be useful for an estate trustee.
No matter which option you choose, it is essential to communicate with the estate trustees named in your will what digital assets you have and how they are to access them. This is especially important if you have valuable digital assets such as cryptocurrency.
Thanks for reading,