Plan ahead for your digital life.

To avoid locking out your loved ones upon your death, designate legacy contacts for your cloud-based accounts and notify those people. This makes it easier for heirs to retrieve photos and other important documents you may have stored.

Finally, have a conversation with your family about your digital assets. It’s not enough to simply pass along login credentials. Do you want your accounts memorialized? Deleted? Should people be able to download your data? Make your wishes known.

Apple

You can designate a legacy contact from the settings on your iPhone, iPad, or Mac under Password & Security. You may name more than one person.

When you’re gone, legacy contacts can access photos, messages, notes, files, apps, and device backups without knowing your Apple ID password. They cannot access purchased movies, music, or books, or any data stored in your iCloud Keychain, such as payment information and passwords.

What they’ll need: Your digital next of kin must provide Apple with your death certificate and the 88-character alphanumeric access key generated when you name them as a legacy contact. If you’re a legacy contact yourself, it’s smart to store a copy of this key in a safe place.

Google

Google allows you to decide what happens to your account after it becomes inactive. Go to myaccount.google.com, select Data & Personalization, then choose “Make a plan for your account.”

From there, Google’s Inactive Account Manager lets you name trusted contacts and choose which data—emails, photos, documents, and more—you want to share.

Facebook

Facebook allows you to name a legacy contact to manage your profile if it’s memorialized. (Instagram accounts can also be memorialized, but legacy contacts aren’t currently supported.)

Legacy contacts can download a copy of what you’ve shared on Facebook, update your profile and cover photos, and request account removal. They can’t log in, read your messages, or add or remove friends.

LinkedIn and Twitter

These platforms don’t offer legacy contacts, but survivors can request the removal of a deceased person’s account on both LinkedIn and Twitter.