What Happens to Your Online Accounts When You Die?

The Short Answer: It Depends, and It's Complicated

Most people assume their online accounts will simply pass to their next of kin, like a savings account or a car. In reality, each platform has its own rules, and many are governed by terms of service that treat your account as a license to use, not property you own outright. That distinction shapes everything that follows.

Email Accounts

Email is often the most important account you have, because it's used to reset passwords everywhere else. But major providers won't hand over login access on request. Some offer limited processes:

• Google has an Inactive Account Manager that lets you nominate someone in advance.
• Apple offers a Legacy Contact feature for Apple ID data.

If you haven't set these up, your family may need a death certificate and sometimes a court order — and even then, access is not guaranteed.

Social Media

Social platforms generally offer two paths after death:

1. Memorialization — the profile is preserved as a place for friends to share memories.
2. Deletion — the account is removed entirely.

Facebook, Instagram, and others let you choose in advance or let a legacy contact request changes. Without instructions, accounts often linger in limbo.

Financial and Banking Accounts

Money in bank and investment accounts is part of your legal estate and passes according to your will or beneficiary designations. However, the online access to those accounts is not automatically transferred. Your executor typically works with the institution directly, using official documents rather than your username and password. Sharing login details can actually violate terms of service, so the goal is to help your executor find and identify accounts — not to encourage them to log in as you.

Cryptocurrency and Digital Wallets

Crypto is uniquely fragile. If no one knows your wallet exists or has your recovery phrase, the assets are permanently lost — there is no customer service line to call. Documenting the existence and safe access path for crypto is one of the highest-value things you can do.

Subscriptions and Cloud Storage

Streaming services, cloud backups, and app subscriptions keep charging until someone cancels them. Photos and files in cloud storage may be deleted if the account lapses. An inventory helps your family stop the bleeding and rescue what matters.

How to Prepare

You can dramatically simplify this for your loved ones:

• Inventory the accounts that matter most.
• Set up built-in legacy tools where platforms offer them.
• Store access instructions securely rather than on sticky notes or unencrypted files.
• Name an executor and tell them where to find your plan.

Legacy Signal is designed for exactly this. Your inventory and credentials are protected with client-side encryption, released only to your designated executor after a built-in safeguard period. The account-closure playbook even gives your executor step-by-step guidance for contacting each provider.

The Takeaway

Your accounts won't sort themselves out. A modest amount of preparation replaces confusion and loss with clarity — making sure the right people can preserve what's meaningful and close what's not.