Anybody know Gedo’s first best friend’s name?

As more of our lives move online, digital estate plans have become essential, FastCompany writes. Imagine loved ones trying to crack their late grandpa’s email password or figure out the name of his first pet to unlock security questions; beyond the obvious difficulty of doing this during a period of grieving, being locked out of deceased family members’ accounts can have real material consequences.

A digital estate plan ensures that your family can access online accounts and assets when you’re no longer around to guide them. It’s as simple as a list of everything from social media accounts to online banking and crypto wallet credentials. This also should include liabilities like subscription services, retail accounts, and any secret dating profiles here or there — it’s too late for them to judge you anyways.

Password managers are the way to go. This way, your loved ones will only need one key to unlock the digital treasure chest. This, paired with a nice straightforward letter of what the platforms are, how they’re accessed, and what should be done with them make for the perfect digital estate plan. This document should be safe but accessible so that it’s ready when needed.

You may also want to think about saving some of your content for posterity. Monash University’s Dr Emily van der Nagel tells the Guardian that if there’s content on your socials that your loved one’s might like to keep, you should start downloading it and storing it yourself rather than rely on third-party services — which often refuse to allow others to access your accounts, even after death.

Some social media sites also allow you to designate “legacy contacts,” van der Nagel notes, with your digital executor able to decide whether to keep, deactivate, or in some cases memorialize your account after your death.

While this may be thinking far ahead, planning for the future will save loved ones the unnecessary headache of an inaccessible digital footprint, and will add the peace of mind of not having mysterious legacies floating around the internet. “There are steps you can take before it happens,” van der Nagel says. “You don’t want to have to deal with this suddenly and unexpectedly while you are grieving.”