How to Manage Your Digital Legacy: Preparing Your Online Data for the Future

As digital lives expand, so too does the concept of ‘digital legacy’—the personal and economic data we leave behind after death. This includes both digital assets, such as financial accounts, domain names, and cryptocurrencies, and digital presence, like photos, social media profiles, and behavioral data such as streaming history or health app records. Planning for this digital footprint is becoming essential, yet remains largely overlooked. Without proper guidance or access permissions, loved ones may be unable to recover sentimental or important digital content due to restrictive privacy laws and platform terms of service.

To address this issue, experts recommend several steps: creating an inventory of online accounts and credentials, specifying preferences for digital content, assigning a digital executor, and using tools like Facebook’s Legacy Contact or Google’s Inactive Account Manager. Despite these tools, inconsistent platform policies and lack of unified legal standards present significant challenges. The increasing use of posthumous digital tools, like AI avatars, further complicates issues of identity, data ownership, and ethics. Legal bodies, including Standards Australia and the NSW Law Reform Commission, are now seeking to establish clearer governance frameworks. Managing digital remains demands not only practical steps but also critical reflection on our data rights and corporate control over digital afterlives.