Digital Life
How to Cancel and Close Your Digital Life After Death
Email, streaming, social media, subscriptions — your digital life doesn't just stop. Here's the complete guide to managing digital accounts after someone dies.
When someone dies, their physical belongings are inventoried and distributed. But their digital life — email accounts, streaming subscriptions, social media profiles, online storage, and more — often keeps running. Charges keep hitting the credit card. Photos stay locked behind a password no one knows. Social media profiles sit untouched, sometimes receiving birthday notifications for years.
This guide covers what families need to do after someone dies, and — more valuably — what you can document now to make it manageable for the people you leave behind.
Why Digital Estate Planning Matters
The average person today has dozens of digital accounts. Without any record of what exists, your family faces a difficult task: discovering what accounts you had, getting access where needed, canceling subscriptions, and making decisions about what to preserve and what to delete.
People commonly discover after a death:
- Streaming services and subscription boxes charging a deceased person's card for months
- Irreplaceable photos locked in iCloud or Google Photos with no way in
- Social media profiles receiving automated birthday messages
- Domain names and websites left unmanaged
- Cryptocurrency wallets inaccessible because no one has the seed phrase
None of these problems are inevitable — but they all require planning ahead.
The Two Things Your Family Needs
1. An inventory of your accounts
Your family needs to know what exists. They don't need your passwords — but they need a list of your accounts, the email address associated with each, and what kind of account it is.
Categories to document:
- Email (primary and any secondary addresses)
- Social media (Facebook, Instagram, X/Twitter, LinkedIn, TikTok, etc.)
- Cloud storage (iCloud, Google Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive)
- Streaming services (Netflix, Spotify, Disney+, Apple TV+, Hulu, etc.)
- Shopping accounts (Amazon, eBay, Etsy)
- Financial accounts accessed online (bank apps, PayPal, Venmo, investment platforms)
- Subscription services (news, software, meal delivery, etc.)
- Domain names or website hosting
- Cryptocurrency exchanges and wallets
- Password managers
2. A plan for each type of account
For each account, your family needs to know what you want done with it. The options are usually: memorialize, delete, or (for some accounts) transfer.
Platform-by-Platform Guide
Google / Gmail
Google has an "Inactive Account Manager" feature that lets you designate what happens to your account if it's inactive for a set period. You can specify trusted contacts who receive access to your data, and choose whether the account should be deleted. Set this up at myaccount.google.com/inactive-account-manager.
Family members can also submit a death certificate to request access to a deceased person's account or have it deleted.
Apple / iCloud
Apple introduced a "Digital Legacy" feature that lets you designate legacy contacts who can request access to your account after your death. Set this up in your Apple ID settings. Without this, access to Apple accounts is very difficult to obtain — photos and other content may be permanently inaccessible.
Facebook allows accounts to be memorialized (turned into a memorial page) or removed. You can designate a "Legacy Contact" who can manage your memorialized profile. Do this in your Settings → Memorialization Settings.
Family members can request memorialization or removal. Instagram does not currently allow legacy contacts or pre-designation the way Facebook does.
Family can report the death and request the profile be removed. There is no memorialization option.
Email accounts
Email is often the key to unlocking everything else — because password reset links go to email. If your family has access to your email, they can often reset passwords on other accounts. Document your primary email address and any recovery methods.
Streaming and subscription services
These are straightforward: once the credit card is canceled or closed, services will stop charging. Your family can also contact services directly to cancel. The main issue is discovering they exist in the first place — which is why the account inventory matters.
Cryptocurrency
This requires special care. Cryptocurrency held in self-custody wallets requires the seed phrase (a sequence of 12–24 words) to access. Without it, the cryptocurrency is permanently inaccessible. Never store the seed phrase in a digital document. Work with an estate planning attorney on a secure, legal method to pass this information to your heirs.
Password Managers
A password manager is the most practical solution for the digital estate problem — for both your security during life and your family's access after death. Most password managers (1Password, Bitwarden, LastPass) have emergency access features that let designated contacts request access to your vault after a waiting period.
If you use a password manager, document the name of the service in your personal affairs record, and set up the emergency access feature. Your family then has a path to everything — without you needing to write passwords on paper.
What to Document Now
In your personal affairs document (whether in AmberLetters or elsewhere), record for each major account:
- The service name
- The email address used to log in
- What type of account it is
- What you want done with it (memorialize / delete / transfer)
- Any special notes (e.g., "the iCloud account has all family photos — please preserve these before closing")
You do not need to — and should not — include passwords in this document.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is it legal for my family to access my accounts after I die?
The legal landscape is complicated. The Revised Uniform Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act (RUFADAA), adopted by most states, gives executors some rights to access digital assets — but the scope varies by platform and state. The simplest path is to use the platform's own legacy/legacy contact tools (Google, Apple, Facebook) and to grant access through a password manager.
What happens to photos in iCloud if I don't set up a legacy contact?
Without an Apple Legacy Contact designation, photos stored in iCloud may be permanently inaccessible to your family after your death. Apple's policy is to protect account security even after death. Setting up a Legacy Contact takes about five minutes and prevents this.
Should I include passwords in my will or letter of instruction?
No. A will becomes a public document through probate. A letter of instruction can be found by the wrong person. Passwords should be managed through a password manager with emergency access, or handled through a secure method developed with your estate planning attorney.
How do I cancel subscriptions I don't even remember having?
Review your bank and credit card statements for recurring charges — this is the most reliable way to discover subscriptions. Services like Rocket Money or your bank's subscription tracking feature can help. Do this periodically so your list stays current.
Ready to get organized?
AmberLetters makes it simple.
Collect everything your family will need to know — accounts, wishes, property, and the letters only you can write — then generate a beautiful PDF for your attorney and loved ones.