Is it important to protect your digital legacy?

More than 60 per cent of the world population has access to the internet, according to the Digital 2021 April Global Statshot Report. So, we are talking about 4.7 billion people. A majority of these people have a digital aspect to their life, either through social media platforms, photographs and documents stored in the cloud, with web-based services provided by the Big Tech, online shopping, or financial services and more. Come to think of it, we are living in a world, where a lot of things we value and cherish, often find space on the cloud or are protected with some digital secure code. And yet, not many of us are consciously thinking about what will happen to our digital assets once we pass away.

Who will gain access to our email account, our Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram accounts, or other platforms we have chosen to document our memories, opinion, communications or even financial details. It is a tough question, especially for content creators and influencers, who have built their worklives in the virtual space.

Would we want our online presence to remain our legacy or do we want it to simply vanish and become inactive after we die?

We often do not think about such questions seriously or even discuss or ponder over it.

The ability to remember deceased friends and families through the photos and stories, can be an important part of the grieving process, but at the same time, it should also reflect and honour the wish of the person whom they belonged to in the first place. “The pace of development in digital assets has been much faster than the laws designed around them. It is also much more than NFTs and crypto currencies. Most people have a lot of memories stored in the cloud (Facebook, iCloud etc.). Some of these services enable members to select what should happen after their death (Facebook for example has an in-memoriam option),” says Stuart Porter, a UAE-based chartered financial planner.