When you are alive, you own or co-own your digital life with a service provider like Google or Facebook.
But who owns your digital legacy when you die? Will your heirs be able to access your accounts, and how will they even know which accounts you have?
In a 2021 Gallup survey, only 45 percent of American adults have a written will; a CNBC survey states it is only 33 percent. Obviously, planning for our inevitable death is not a popular activity, but can we put a plan together and centralize our digital legacy for easier management?
Major sites like Facebook and Google allow you to either assign a legacy contract after you die, or you automatically delete your data after you die. Facebook allows you to memorialize your data for others to see your historical photos and memories. The Google Inactive Account Manager allows you to define a period of inactivity between three and 18 months, then notify people you previously assigned who then have three months to collect your data. If they do not respond, your data will automatically be deleted.
While these mega tech companies make it easy to address your digital legacy, the hundreds, if not thousands, of other sites are more difficult. Many states have laws that require larger websites to allow you to download your data and remove your account, but do your heirs have this right as well? Like most of modern life, the written law has not clearly addressed this issue of digital rights when compared to the many centuries of written law for property rights.
LastPass
In past issues, Omnipotech has recommended using a password and digital manager like LastPass. LastPass allows you to store your websites and your login credentials. People have limited memories, so they use simple passwords that they reuse for many sites. When - not if - a technology service is hacked, usernames and passwords are stolen and resold on the dark web, allowing hackers to launch attacks in the future from pre-built lists.
A password manager allows you to create unique passwords for every site or service and the passwords can be insanely long. For instance, my Amazon password is over 60 characters and LastPass types it for me, so I never need to remember it. When I need a new password or want to reset my password, LastPass has a built-in password generator. LastPass can also store other aspects of your life like credit cards, bank, investment and retirement accounts, life, health, car, home, disability and other insurance, passports, social security, memberships, government IDs and so much more.
Airlines and credit cards that accumulate miles and points are not considered property, so if you cancel the account, those items are lost forever. However, most companies allow family members to pool rewards, so save your airline information as well. If you have ever needed to gather all of this type of information for a family member, then you know how time consuming this would be - assuming you could even get the information.
However, LastPass centralizes your digital life, making it easier for you while you are alive, and allows those you trust to access your data after a period of time if you are unable to manage your affairs or have died. When you create an account, a master password is created and two-factor authentication is set up.
When you access your account, both the hash - a string of characters that represent your master password - and your decryption key are stored locally. Each time you change your master password, a new decryption key will be created on that device. Your master password is never stored at LastPass. It also uses a one-way salted hash, which is just a fancy way of saying the software adds characters to the hash to increase complexity.
Understanding the security of a service like LastPass is complicated, but having a tool to make your digital life easier while you are alive, and better for your heirs when you die, is simple to understand and simple to use.
For more information, visit omnipotech.com or call (281) 768-4308.
