What Happens to Your Online Accounts When You Die?

Photos on a locked phone. Email accounts nobody can open. Subscriptions that keep charging a card. The digital side of a person's life is often the part families struggle with most, because it is invisible until somebody needs it.

First, what not to do

The instinct is to write every password on a piece of paper. For banking in particular, that can be a problem: many banks' terms require you to keep your access codes secret, and sharing or recording them carelessly can affect you while you are alive and well. There are safer ways to do this properly.

The safer setup, in three parts

1. Use a password manager with an emergency option. A password manager stores your logins securely behind one master password. Several offer an emergency access feature, where a person you choose can request access and receive it after a waiting period. One decision, and your whole digital life becomes reachable by the right person at the right time.

2. Switch on the built-in legacy tools. The big platforms have quietly solved part of this problem, and most people have never opened the settings. Apple lets you name a Legacy Contact who can access your Apple account and photos after you die. Google's Inactive Account Manager lets you decide in advance what happens to your Gmail, photos and files if your account goes quiet. Both take a few minutes to set up.

3. Record what exists, not the passwords. What an executor needs first is a map: which bank, which email provider, which subscriptions, which loyalty programs, where the photos live. A list of what exists and where to find it breaks no rules and saves months of detective work. The passwords themselves stay locked in the password manager, with emergency access doing the heavy lifting.

The subscriptions nobody remembers

Streaming services, apps, cloud storage, domain names, software renewals. These keep billing quietly until someone finds and cancels them, and families often only discover them one bank statement at a time. Listing them while you are alive takes minutes. Reconstructing them later can take a very long time.

Make it part of the bigger picture

Your digital life is one chapter of getting organised, alongside accounts, super, insurance and wishes. The Estate Organiser includes a dedicated section for recording your digital world safely, and the free Executor Toolkit shows the person handling things exactly what to do, step by step.

Download the free Executor Toolkit here.

Educational content only. Not legal, financial or tax advice. Estate laws vary across Australian states and territories. Always consult a qualified professional about your specific situation.