Developing a plan for passing on those digital files and passwords after you are gone can save loved ones from the time consuming and frustrating process of sorting through your online estate. It’s also possible that either as a survivor or as a lawyer, you might find yourself in a position where you need to handle someone’s digital affairs. Its a brave new world and while the concept of estate executor may not have changed, the execution part has grown a whole new division.
A good starting point for both planning and execution of the digital part of a business is to find knowledgeable technical and legal help. There are attorneys and technology companies that have amassed expertise in this area and are familiar with the nuances and process of digital survivorship. Even with outside expertise available, it helps to have a basic understanding of the right questions to ask and some immediate steps to take or not to take with proper closure, notifications and dissemination of digital assets.
1) In the case of a death, try to get to contact lists, e-mail accounts and social media accounts to notify friends who the deceased would want to be notified.
2) Change all passwords as soon as possible.
3) Try to understand the totality of the person’s online presence and identify some of the people he or she has interacted with most for assistance, especially in the social media platforms.
4) Do not start closing accounts, shutting down hosting and e-mail, or taking other drastic steps until you have a good sense of the individual’s presence and what you are ultimately going to do with it. Keeping a Web site up for a year or more will not be expensive. Shutting it down too early and losing valuable data could be quite expensive.
5) Be slow to delete, but when you delete or dispose of computers and drives, delete in accordance with forensic standards so data cannot be retrieved by others.
6) Spend $100 on an external USB hard drive and make a copy of all hard drives, flash drives and other data and keep them in one safe place. Once you start to go through the data, you can keep another drive with the “good stuff.”
7) Make copies of Web sites and other online accounts.
8) Locate all the financial information and client records as soon as possible and aggregate and isolate them.
9) Remove credit card information from shopping accounts.
10) Err on the side of keeping e-mail, documents and photographs for family members.
For more information, see Part I of the series: Does your Business Have a Will? Digital Asset Protection and Succession Planning Part I
