What does your digital life look like? Do you have hundreds or thousands of emails lurking on servers somewhere, or on your computer? Do you have a Facebook profile page or a Twitter account? What about Flickr or Google Plus, or LinkedIn? Do you have a website or a blog? Do you invest online? What about your bank account and passwords?
Have you thought about what will happen to all of this ‘stuff’ if something were to happen to you? I mean -would you want your family members seeing everything that you’ve said, created, invested and posted? What about old photos and private emails? And, most importantly, is your digital life going to just sit out there in cyberspace after you’re gone or would you want it removed?
Knowing what will happen to your online life depends on what you do to prepare beforehand. Creating a digital will gives your family or executor a guideline to your digital legacy, that can fulfill your requests.
Your digital legacy will explain what you’d like to leave behind, on the Internet mostly, for others to remember, and what you’d like deleted. A roadmap such as a digital will is the only way friends or family will gain access, or have the power to delete your personal items.
Do you choose to leave up blogs and websites, especially if they are earning money, for family to continue and benefit from – or would you prefer to be ‘dead’ digitally as well as physically?
Do you want a memorial page on Facebook after you’re gone so that your friends and acquaintances can leave condolence messages? Or do you want your family to have a complete list of all of your ‘Tweets’?
This can all be done while you’re still here. Creating a ‘digital will’ can list all of the important sites, user ID’s and everything else, digitally, that matters to you, for your family to sort through, or delete. It can offer them the keys to your online business and future plans with it, or blogs not yet posted.
Every day that you surf the web – you’re creating more and more of your legacy, and the depth to what is actually out there might actually be surprising…. Do you delete you’re angry comments, or do we leave it up for our kids and grandkids? Is it just using up server space or is it vital to who you were?
Creating your digital will can eliminate a lot of embarrassment, as well as leave you with a legacy of which you can be proud.
Here are some ideas:
- The best way to carry on or delete your digital life is to just add to your existing Living Will or Trust. This can be an amendment, and through legal representatives, it will be certain to fall into the right hands. Your legal representative can be your executor, or you can name one or two, to handle all of your digital life after you’re gone, and to follow your demands.
- Create a digital will online with sites that are offering this service, such as Legacy Locker or Digital Undertakers; and even places that can help you organize all of your digital life into one easy place, such as Ziggur.
- Create a list, at the very least, of all of your online assets, such as investment account ID’s and bank account access information, as well as access to contact lists, and other important information and keep it in a safe place, so that if something should happen unexpectedly, your family will be able to contact friends, access money, and close or manage your investment accounts.
- Consider purchasing a flash drive to allow all of your digital information to be stored there, so that should something happen, it can be accessed upon your death, with all the information your family or executor needs. The flash drive can be locked in a safe or safety deposit box for security.
- Facebook has a digital online video that can be recorded, and left to your loved ones, in an application called “If I Die” which will be passed on to beneficiaries and executors after proper proof of your death.
- Leave letters and documents that can be forwarded to the people you choose, upon your death, and can include passwords, business information and personal things as well. The organization is called “If I Die” and they have a process that keeps your information locked, until your death.
- LifeNaut has a digital ‘Mindfile and Biofile’ that you can create, that actually allows you to continue living, digitally. It’s pretty amazing and it is FREE. In the future when robotics become a reality, you can even have yourself ‘digitally’ reproduced into a robot or a ‘time capsule’ of your life to carry on your legacy.
There are many things you can do, depending on your preferences to keep your digital life, or self, online forever, or deleted. These are things that most of should be thinking about regularly.
Creating that digital will can ensure that everything you would like to see happen, does.
This article is from Will from Life Insurance Finder. Discover more about the fascinating world of Digital Death.
Featured image courtesy of john47kent
