Digital Legacy Planning — What Every Australian Family Should Know
When most Australians think about getting their affairs in order, they think about Wills, property, and superannuation. Increasingly, however, a significant and often overlooked part of any estate is entirely digital.
Online banking. Email accounts. Cloud photo storage. Social media profiles. Subscription services. Online share trading platforms. Cryptocurrency holdings. PayPal balances. Digital purchases — music, books, movies — held in online accounts.
The digital dimension of modern life is substantial. And when someone dies or loses capacity without having addressed it, families can face a confusing and sometimes irreversible set of problems.
What Is a Digital Legacy?
Your digital legacy is the sum of everything you own, store, or have access to online. It includes:
Financial digital assets — online bank accounts, PayPal, cryptocurrency wallets, online share trading accounts, loyalty points with significant value.
Personal digital assets — photos stored in Google Photos, iCloud or similar services; emails; documents stored in cloud services like Dropbox or Google Drive; personal videos.
Social media accounts — Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and similar platforms, each with their own policies about what happens to accounts after death.
Subscription services — Netflix, Spotify, Amazon Prime, and hundreds of other services that continue to charge fees unless cancelled.
Domain names and websites — if you own a business website, personal blog, or have registered domain names, these have ongoing costs and potential value.
Digital purchases — it is worth understanding that many digital purchases are licences, not assets. Music purchased through iTunes, for example, is licensed to the account holder and does not transfer to an estate in the same way a physical CD would.
The Problems Families Encounter
When someone dies without having addressed their digital affairs, families face several practical difficulties.
They don't know what exists. Without a record of online accounts, family members cannot identify what needs to be dealt with. Subscription charges may continue for months. Valuable accounts may be permanently lost.
They can't access accounts without passwords. Most online platforms require a username and password to access an account. Without these, family members cannot log in — and the legal process for gaining access to a deceased person's accounts is complex, time-consuming, and inconsistent across platforms.
Platform policies vary widely. Facebook allows accounts to be memorialised or removed. Google has an Inactive Account Manager tool that can transfer data to a nominated person. Apple's Digital Legacy program allows nominated legacy contacts to access data after death. But many platforms have no formal process at all — and once an account is gone, the data inside it is often gone too.
Cryptocurrency can be permanently lost. If a person holds cryptocurrency and the private keys or seed phrase are not documented and accessible, the holdings can be permanently inaccessible. Unlike a bank account, there is no institution to contact and no process for recovery.
What Good Digital Legacy Planning Looks Like
Addressing your digital legacy does not require technical expertise. It requires documentation and communication.
Create a record of your accounts. List the online accounts you hold — banking, investment, social media, subscriptions, cloud storage, email — and where possible, note the email address associated with each account.
Consider a dedicated password manager. For passwords specifically, a dedicated password manager (such as 1Password, Bitwarden, or similar) is the most secure approach. Store a note in your Legacy Vault about which password manager you use and how your executor or trusted person can access it — without storing the passwords themselves in the Vault.
Document your cryptocurrency holdings carefully. If you hold cryptocurrency, ensure your executor or a trusted person knows this and has access to the information needed to manage or liquidate those holdings. This is an area where specialist advice is worth seeking.
Review platform legacy settings. Google, Apple, and Facebook each have settings that allow you to nominate what happens to your accounts and data after death. Spending twenty minutes reviewing these settings is time well spent.
Communicate with your executor. Your executor cannot deal with digital assets they do not know about. Make sure they understand the scope of your digital life and know where to find the information they need.
A Note on Passwords and the BIG Legacy Vault
The BIG Legacy Vault is designed to store important personal, legal, financial and medical information — not passwords. For passwords, we recommend using a dedicated password manager built specifically for that purpose.
What your Vault should contain is a note about which password manager you use, where it is accessible, and any instructions your family needs to locate digital accounts. That combination — Legacy Vault plus password manager — gives your family both the map and the means to navigate your digital estate.
The Bottom Line
The digital dimension of modern life is not going away. For Australian families managing an estate, it is increasingly one of the most complex and time-sensitive areas to navigate.
Addressing it is not complicated. It simply requires the same thoughtful documentation that every other area of your affairs deserves — and a secure, accessible place to store that information.
