What Happens to Online Accounts After Someone’s Death? Product Review & Legacy Locker
By M. Kotch
Once upon a time, a loved one’s possessions, including letters and old photographs, passed to family and beneficiaries upon his or her death. But times have changed and so have the mediums we use to store correspondences, pictures (when’s the last time you developed a roll of film?) and documents.
We live in an age when your family album is more likely to be stored on Facebook or Flickr, your bank statements are viewed online and those romantic emails you never erased from your boyfriend are floating in cyberspace—not in your desk drawer. So how do you keep such sensitive online-information safe, and what happens to those accounts if something were to happen to you? As of right now, nothing. Laws have been slow to keep up with the advance of online databases and accounts. We often think of storing copies of important documents (such as wills, deeds and passports) in a safety deposit box or safe, but what about your blog’s access information or the surplus in your PayPal account? If worrying about such things keeps you up at night, you’re not the only one. The folks behind Legacy Locker, a California-based company, have created a way to safely store your digital information and share it with whomever you choose after your passing.
Jeremy Toeman, one of the company’s founders, had an experience that many of us can identify with. After his grandmother passed away, he had no way of accessing her email account to contact her friends. He’d also just recently become a father and realized that should something happen to him, his son would have no way of accessing his accounts one day. The solution was creating a digital safety deposit box to hold all of someone’s account/password information and passing it along when the need arises.
• How it works: Signing up can be done quickly online—no surprise there. After entering your name, password and address, you’ll be asked to name two verifiers (people you trust to contact to confirm your passing). You’ll then be asked to enter all your assets (accounts and passwords) and name beneficiaries for each or all of the assets.
• Beneficiaries: Legacy Locker gives you the option of naming one or multiple recipients for specific accounts. This can be especially convenient in a situation where you would like your spouse to have access to personal accounts, and a business partner to access all professional accounts for example.
• What you can store: Each account and corresponding password is known as an asset. In addition to Web-based assets (various social networking, email and/or other accounts), Legacy Locker allows you to store encrypted copies of important documents such as your last will, contracts, birth certificates, etc. You have the option of adding more assets at any time.
• How much it costs: Legacy Locker currently offers three plans, the first is free and provides storage for three assets, names one beneficiary but offers no document storage. The second is an annual plan that costs $29.99/year and offers unlimited asset storage, beneficiaries, document backup and legacy letters, as well video uploads. The third option offers the same unlimited services as the second plan for a one-time fee of $299.99.
• Verification process: If someone were to contact Legacy Locker and inform them of your passing, the company will then contact your verifiers, confirm you have passed and seek a death certificate or medical examiner’s report before releasing any of your assets.
• Online security: The company keeps personal information secure in a number of ways. The first step is by not releasing any information before confirming someone’s death through verifiers. The next is by making the release impossible without human supervision. According to Legacy Locker, a hacker cannot trick their system into releasing any information because a human being has to sign off on such a procedure. Lastly, the company employs third party vendors (such as McAfee Security) and encrypts information over a thousand times before it’s stored in a maximum-security database.
• What else they offer: In addition to passing your information along after you’ve passed, the company allows you to create legacy letters and videos for each beneficiary you name.
• Tech support: You can contact the company through email if you run into any problems. Legacy Locker does not currently offer 24-hour tech support.
A few things to keep in mind: creating an account with Legacy Locker is not the same as creating a last will. The plans they offer simply store information for you until the company is notified of your death. Your family and/or friends should be aware of this so they will know to contact the company after your passing and get the process of distributing assets started.
For more information visit: www.legacylocker.com
