Digital legacy: what happens to your photos and accounts when you die

Your mother had an iPad. On it were the photos of the grandchildren, of the garden, of her last birthday. After her death the iPad lies in a drawer. Nobody knows the code. This happens in many families, and it can almost always be prevented with half an hour of work today.

The short answer

The big services each have their own arrangement, and they only work if you set them up while you still can. At Google it is called Inactive Account Manager, at Apple a Legacy Contact, at Facebook a legacy contact for a memorialized account. In Belgium, digital data is part of the estate, and an executor can be given its management. What is arranged nowhere: which photos truly matter, and who gets them.

What each service arranges

Service	What you set up	What your loved ones get
Google (Photos, Gmail, Drive)	Inactive Account Manager: after 3, 6, 12 or 18 months of silence, up to ten contacts	A download link for the parts you choose, valid for three months
Apple (iCloud Photos, messages)	Legacy Contact, from iOS 15.2, with an access key	Access to photos, messages, notes, files and backups, after a request with a death certificate
Facebook	Legacy contact for a memorialized account, and permission to download	Management of the memorialized profile, and a copy of what you shared if you allowed it

If you set nothing up at Google, an account that stays unused for two years may be deleted. At Apple, without a Legacy Contact, a court procedure is needed. At Facebook the family can request memorialization or deletion, but without your prior permission they cannot download photos.

How it works in Belgium

According to the Belgian notaries, digital data is part of your estate, just like your house or your savings account. Two things are good to know:

• An executor. In a will you can name someone who takes care of managing your digital data.
• Izimi. The notaries offer a free digital vault for documents. You decide what happens to it after your death; if you make no choice, the heirs can request the contents through their notary.

Do not put passwords in a will. It is read by several people, and passwords change. A list of the accounts you have, without passwords, is useful though: loved ones often do not even know which services there were. For your own situation, a notary is the right person to ask.

Rules differ from country to country, so if you live elsewhere, a local notary or lawyer can advise you.

What you can do today, in half an hour

1. Make a list of the places where your photos are: phone, Google, iCloud, Facebook, an old computer, an external drive.
2. Set up a contact for each service. At Google in your Google Account under Data & privacy, at Apple in Settings under your name, at Facebook in the memorialization settings.
3. Tell that person. A contact who does not know they are one will never go looking.
4. Choose the photos that matter. Inheriting twenty thousand photos is not a gift, it is a chore. Thirty photos with a name and a story are a gift.

The photos that matter, in one place

The arrangements of Google, Apple and Facebook give access to an account, not to a story. Your loved ones receive a folder with thousands of files, without knowing which photo is your parents' wedding day and which is a blurry copy.

That is what The Memory Palace is for. You bring the photos, recordings and stories together in the rooms of a palace, and you decide who gets what and when: for each person an heir or a confidant, the whole palace or only certain rooms, on a date or only after a silence you set yourself, from 3 to 36 months. First you receive an email yourself, then thirty days to reconsider follow, and a trusted person can stop it. A full export is always possible, also on the free plan. What we do not promise: forever.