“Until recently, when a family member died you would look through their filing cabinet to find details of their accounts, browse their address book to find their contacts and inherit their physical photo albums. But my accounts for banks and utilities are online. My contacts are in Google and Outlook and my photos in several places, to keep them safe. Then there are my email accounts and accounts for all the social media, shopping, travel sites I use … the list seems endless. I must get organised so I don’t leave my children a digital nightmare.”
That’s from a 2018 TechTips and I’ve been working on this ever since. Not because I’m disorganised or it’s too complicated but because, as I wrote back then, “As this is sensitive data, I need to be careful where it’s saved.” Over the years, I’ve tried various encrypted note-taking apps. But they were too expensive. Or lost my data. Or were difficult to share. But now I have a solution.
Private Proton
Based in Switzerland with its famously strict privacy laws, Proton is a company that puts security at the heart of everything it does. And in 2024, it delivered the answer to my problem: Proton Docs – secure, web-based documents created and edited within Proton Drive (drive.proton.me), with end-to-end encryption that protects everything inside. Even Proton can’t read them.
Proton’s free plan (proton.me/drive/pricing) gives 5GB of storage – plenty for this project. In my Drive, I have a Digital Asset List folder with subfolders like Finance, Admin, Family, Work. In these, I have one Proton Doc per organisation containing all the relevant account information. All except the passwords which I keep separately in my password manager as sharing those is … legally tricky, for reasons I’ll come to! Then it’s a question of making the information available to my family. Fortunately, Proton’s secure “Share” feature makes this simple, providing a secure link they just save until they need it.
Legal pitfalls!
The legal side of things – with the caveat that I’m not a lawyer and this is not legal advice! The Property (Digital Assets etc) Act 2025 clarifies that certain digital assets can be treated as property under English law. However, the Computer Misuse Act 1990 prevents unauthorised access to accounts, as do many companies’ terms and conditions. To avoid legal pitfalls, the best way forward is to update my will with my solicitor’s guidance and create an accompanying formal Memorandum of Digital Assets, based on the Digital Asset List. Then my executors will have the information they need to deal with everything appropriately. And I’ll finally have peace of mind knowing my digital life won’t become my family’s digital nightmare.