Most people don't think about this until they're sitting in front of a screen that belongs to someone who just died, trying to figure out the password.
Your digital life — email accounts, cloud storage, subscriptions, social media profiles, photos stored in apps — doesn't have a clear next of kin. Each platform has its own policy. Most of them were never designed with death in mind.
What actually happens
Email accounts: usually locked when the provider is notified, sometimes accessible to family with death certificates, sometimes not. Years of correspondence, gone or frozen.
Social media: some platforms offer 'memorialization' — the profile stays up but becomes a tribute. Others simply deactivate. Your photos, your posts, your messages — treated differently by every company.
Cloud storage: photos in iCloud, Google Photos, Dropbox — most require formal legal requests to access, if they allow it at all. Many families lose years of photos because no one knew the password and the company wouldn't help.
Banking and financial accounts: generally covered by probate law, but digital access is often locked immediately, causing real problems for families during a deeply difficult time.
What you can do right now
First: write down what accounts exist and what they contain. Not passwords in plaintext — use a password manager and leave instructions for how to access it.
Second: decide what matters. Not every account needs to survive. Some can be closed. Some should be preserved. Some have things in them people need to see.
Third: put your intentions somewhere that will actually execute them. Not a folder on your desktop. Not a note in your phone. Somewhere with structure — with named people, with delivery rules, with timing.
EternalSelf's Legacy OS isn't a password manager. It's the layer on top: who gets what, when they get it, and why. The accounts are yours to close or transfer — the Legacy OS is where you document the plan and the words that go with it.