Guide · 6 min

What happens to your online accounts after you die?

A digital life does not end with its owner. Accounts stay open, subscriptions keep being charged, and photos stay locked behind a password nobody knows.

Here is what actually happens, platform by platform, and what your loved ones can — or cannot — obtain.

What the law generally allows

In France, the 2016 Digital Republic Act lets anyone leave directives about what happens to their personal data after death: have it deleted, have it passed on, or appoint someone to carry those wishes out. Those directives override everything else. Many countries have adopted comparable rules.

Without such directives, heirs have limited rights. They can essentially close accounts, object to data processing, and obtain the information needed to settle the estate. That does not grant free access to the content: your messages and photos are not property that is automatically inherited.

This is the nuance almost nobody has in mind: the law organises closure, not transmission. If you want something to reach someone, you must arrange it while you are alive.

Google: Inactive Account Manager

Google offers the most complete tool, and it is free. In your account settings, Inactive Account Manager lets you set an inactivity period (3 to 18 months), then name up to ten people who will receive access to some of your data — or request that the account simply be deleted.

If you do only one thing today, do this one. Its limit: it only covers Google's ecosystem, and it hands over raw data — no message, no explanation, no context.

Facebook and Instagram: legacy contact and memorialisation

Meta lets you appoint a legacy contact who can manage your profile once it becomes a memorial account: pin a post, respond to friend requests, change the picture. That contact cannot read your private messages.

Without an appointed contact, a relative can request memorialisation or deletion by providing proof of death. Expect several weeks.

Apple: one of the strictest, now planned for

Apple was long considered impenetrable — families had to obtain court orders to reach a late relative's photos. Since iOS 15.2 you can appoint Legacy Contacts, who receive an access key allowing them to retrieve your iCloud data after your death.

Again: it has to be set up while you are alive. Without it, access remains extremely difficult.

Banks, insurance, subscriptions

Bank accounts are frozen as soon as the bank is notified of the death, and the estate is handled through the legal process. The real problem is not legal, it is practical: your family first has to know those accounts exist.

Subscriptions, meanwhile, keep charging until somebody cancels them. Streaming, cloud storage, licences, web hosting, a domain name: it is often months of charges before anyone notices.

—List bank and insurance accounts, with the institutions — not the passwords.
—List recurring subscriptions and which card pays for them.
—Note the accounts nobody would suspect: crypto, brokerage, domains.

The five-step checklist

If you only do five things, do these — they cover the essentials and take under an hour in total.

—Turn on Google's Inactive Account Manager.
—Appoint a legacy contact at Meta and at Apple if you use them.
—Write down the list of your important accounts — their existence, not their passwords.
—Decide who should receive what, and tell that person while you are alive.
—Arrange a safe way to hand over access when the time comes, without exposing it today.