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What happens to our electronic cloud records when we die? (continued)

Simon Ritchie
Leatherhead, Surrey, UK

In many cases, what happens with your data is entirely up to the companies that hold it. Free services such as social media providers make money off of your data, so they will keep it for as long as possible. Because maintaining stored data is expensive, a lot of other services will just discard it.

Unless you have left a record of your password, your heirs won’t be able to access your emails, so anything not stored on your computer will effectively be lost immediately. Services that need to be secure, such as online payment systems, are increasingly using some form of two-factor authentication involving the ability to receive a text message or run a mobile phone security app.

This is fine until you die, at which point your heirs won’t know your passwords or may close your mobile phone account before they discover that they need it to access data that they have only just found out about.

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