The international digital legacy checklist

Laws vary by country, but the practical work of digital legacy is the same worldwide. This checklist works in the US, EU, Asia, and anywhere else you have online accounts.

1. Inventory

• Password manager export — List every account in your password manager
• Email accounts — Your email is the recovery key to almost everything
• Financial accounts — Banking, payments, investment, and tax portals
• Crypto and wallets — Exchanges, hardware wallets, seed phrases
• Cloud and photos — Google, Apple, Dropbox, and other file storage
• Social and messaging — Which to memorialize, which to delete, which to hand over
• Domains and subscriptions — Domain names, hosting, SaaS, and recurring payments

2. Decide recipients and rules

• Name an executor or digital heir — One trusted person overall, plus contacts for specific assets if needed
• Set platform legacy tools — Apple Legacy Contact, Google Inactive Account Manager, Facebook memorialization
• Write a digital legacy letter — Plain-language instructions: what to close, what to keep, who gets what
• Keep some things private — Use E2E encryption or auto-delete for content you do not want released

3. Store and release

• Encrypted vault — Store passwords, seed phrases, and documents encrypted at rest
• Heartbeat check-in — If you stop checking in, contacts are asked to verify before anything releases
• Staged release — Remind you first, then notify contacts, then release — never all at once
• Legal backup — Reference the vault in your will so the executor has formal authority

4. Maintain

• Quarterly review — Update passwords, add new accounts, remove old ones
• Test the release — Make sure your trusted contacts know their role and how it works
• After life events — Update everything after marriage, divorce, a new child, or a death in the family

The biggest risk is not legal — it is doing nothing. Most families are locked out simply because no one knew the passwords or that certain accounts existed. The checklist above takes an afternoon and prevents months of painful recovery.