Joining My Digital Executor solves the worry if you have a reasonably active internet life as to what happens to your internet accounts, monies and digital assets after you die. Informal written notes, containing your wishes, are of no effect in law when you die, and, to make matters worse, web services follow different policies, with many allowing people who are neither next of kin, nor authorised by you, to take control and delete the account and content or even create a memorial site that may not be in accordance with your wishes or the wishes of your family and friends.
Think of what may be lost by way of a resource of your life for your family and friends or assets of real value :-
Years of blogging, posted messages, photos and emails that could be a wonderful memento of your life and resource for your descendants, if not important information, lost on non-renewal.
The loss of resources and assets with a monetary value, such as affiliate marketing accounts e.g. Amazon, monetised gaming assets e.g Second Life businesses or World of Warcraft avatars (in January 2010 the Guinness Boook of Records reported that the sum of £228,263 was paid for a virtual space station in the online game Planet Calypso).
The loss of creative assets in which you have intellectual property rights, eg in music, images, designs, writings etc. Such rights exist automatically in law subject to any contractual arrangements you may have reached with third parties.
The inadvertent breach by default of legal commitments (e.g. failure to renew domain names and website hosting, or failure to complete on auction sales) causing damage and loss to others that may become a legal liability on the estate.
Online friends and business contacts unaware of your demise leading to the potential for additional pain to your family and friends.
Online databases , possibly business confidential, lost on non-renewal.
Income streams from affiliate programs and online advertising becoming lost and terminated.
Domain names that have value becoming lost to your estate on failure to renew.
Access lost to online funds such as PayPal or betting accounts or your loved ones simply being unaware of their existence.
As we rely more and more on the convenience and flexibility of online services, we need to plan for when we are no longer around to login and access them.
