What happens to your photos and online presence the day you die
Legacy Contact on iPhone, Inactive Account Manager on Google: how to leave photos, files, and accounts to loved ones. Free, in fifteen minutes. Few people know.
Last year, I helped a family after a funeral. They were looking for photos of the father—thousands of shots taken over the last fifteen years. They were all right there, in the phone, saved to iCloud. No one knew the passcode. We spent weeks navigating forms, certificates, and automated responses. Some of those photos were never recovered.
It is a scene that repeats itself constantly and that no one talks about. We prepare wills for the house and the bank account, and we leave our entire digital life behind a password that dies with us.
It must be said immediately that Swiss inheritance law does not contain specific provisions on digital assets. There is no regulation that tells heirs how to access an account. The rules are made by American companies, and fortunately, the tools exist. They are free, take fifteen minutes to set up, and almost no one knows about them.
On the iPhone, the feature is called Legacy Contact. It is found in Settings; you tap your name at the top, then Password & Security, then Legacy Contact. You choose a trusted person from your contacts, who receives an access key. Upon your death, by presenting that key and the death certificate, that person gains access to photos, messages, notes, files, contacts, and backups. They do not get the passwords saved in the keychain and do not get licensed content, such as movies and music, which remain non-transferable.
On Android (Google), the feature is called Inactive Account Manager and is found by entering your Google account under the Data & Privacy section. You choose after how many months of inactivity the procedure is triggered, designate up to ten trusted people with their respective emails, and decide what they can download: photos, files on Drive, emails. You can also stipulate that the account be deleted entirely. It is the only tool that works automatically, without the need for someone to take action.
On Facebook and Instagram, there is a legacy contact who can turn the profile into a memorialized one or request its deletion. Pay attention to a detail that surprises many: that contact manages the profile but cannot read private messages. None of the major platforms consider them transferable.
Three practical tips to avoid leaving the dirty work to those left behind.
The first is to start with the phone. If only one person in the family knows the passcode to their device and has not written it down anywhere, everything else is just theory. A piece of paper in a safe with the code and essential instructions solves more problems than any setting. Those who use a password manager will find an emergency access feature inside, which does the same job in a more elegant way.
The second concerns subscriptions. When a person dies, their subscriptions continue to renew and charge. Streaming, cloud space, applications, services of all kinds. Make a list, indicate where to cancel them, and update it once a year.
The third is to include a couple of lines in your testamentary dispositions. A complicated document is not necessary: it is enough to indicate who handles the digital assets and where to find the instructions. The family notary or lawyer knows how to frame it. It costs nothing and is worth a great deal.
Those who own a business have an additional, more urgent problem. The Facebook page, the business profile, the website domain, the main email inbox, and access to management software are often in the hands of a single person. When that person is gone, suddenly or due to illness, the business stops. Two names with access to every critical service are not a luxury; they are business continuity.
I leave you with the thought that remained with me after that affair. Our photographs are no longer in a box in the attic, where anyone could find them. They are inside a system built specifically so that no one, except us, can enter. It is a formidable protection while we are alive. It becomes a wall the day after. Take fifteen minutes this week, and that wall will have a door.