When You Die, What Happens To Your Online Accounts If Your Family Can't Unlock Your Phone?

Particularly regarding two-factor authentication, which could cause real problems for the people you leave behind, here’s how to get your digital affairs in order so your loved ones can access your online accounts after you pass away.

An astonishing amount of our activity now takes place online, especially financial stuff. The good news is that most financial institutions have well-established procedures for handling your untimely demise. If your next of kin can hand over a proper death certificate, whoever's handling the estate can have access to their accounts.

But for most online services, you'll have to jump through some serious hoops if you can't supply the proper credentials to sign in. The acrobatics can reach an extreme degree of difficulty if 2FA is involved.

If the deceased person's mobile number is on your family account, you can contact the mobile provider to have the number transferred to you. If you don't have access to the account, the executor of the estate can contact the mobile provider to perform the transfer. Here are instructions for the three big mobile carriers in the U.S. If you have a different carrier, you should be able to find similar instructions on their support site.

For other types of accounts, including email and social media, you'll run into more serious roadblocks. Google, for example, says that it might provide content from a deceased user's account to immediate family members but will not provide passwords or other login details. Facebook has a similar policy. And Apple makes it crystal clear that the only way it can remove the passcode lock for an iPhone is by erasing the device.

The onus is really on you to get your digital affairs in order so that your survivors can sort out your stuff after you've shuffled off this mortal coil. The easiest way to do that is to write down the username and password for your email account and the passcode for your phone; if you use a password manager, include instructions for accessing its contents, too. Store that document in a safe place with other important papers, including your will and life insurance policy. And make sure whoever's left behind knows where to look for those documents. 

Article courtesy of Ed Bott & ZDNet Editors, ZDNet(dot)com
Royalty-free photo courtesy of UnSplash

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