Nothing happens to your online accounts automatically when you die. There is no master switch, no notification, no cleanup crew. Your email, photos, social profiles and subscriptions simply sit there until someone acts, or until an inactivity timer acts first. The three biggest platforms (Facebook, Google and Apple) each have a built-in tool for exactly this moment, and in 48 US states the choice you record inside the platform is the legally controlling one, ahead of anything your will says. This guide covers what happens on each platform as of 2026, the law behind it, and a checklist that closes the gap in about 20 minutes.
The short answer: nothing happens automatically
No platform learns of a death on its own. A Facebook profile stands exactly as it was until someone tells Facebook the person died; Facebook has no inactivity-deletion policy at all. A Google account sits untouched until Google’s own two-year inactivity rule makes it eligible for deletion. An Apple Account keeps its photos, messages and backups locked behind a password Apple will not hand over.
What each of the big three does have is a choice you can make while you are alive: Facebook’s legacy contact (or delete-after-death), Google’s Inactive Account Manager, and Apple’s Legacy Contact. Each takes a few minutes to set up, and each only works if you set it up before it is needed.
And in nearly every US state, a law called RUFADAA makes the in-platform choice outrank your will. More on that below.
Your accounts will outlive you
A 2019 University of Oxford study projected that even if Facebook had stopped adding users in 2018, it would hold the profiles of at least 1.4 billion dead members by 2100, and the dead could outnumber the living there by 2070; if the platform kept growing, the projection reached 4.9 billion. Those are projections, not counts (no official number exists), but the direction is not in question: the internet is filling up with accounts whose owners have died.
Your own share of that is bigger than it feels. A 2024 study by the password manager NordPass put the average person at 168 personal passwords, with roughly 87 more for work. Call it around 170 logins. A handful matter enormously: the email account that can reset every other password, the photo library, the profile your friends will visit the week after the funeral.
Someone will eventually deal with every one of those accounts, or fail to; the rest of this guide is about deciding which it will be.
The three big platforms, compared
Facebook, Google and Apple each solved this problem differently. Here is the shape of all three, as of 2026, before we walk through each in detail.
| Platform | The built-in tool | Who can act | What they get | What expires |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| A legacy contact, or delete-after-death | The Facebook friend you chose | Manages the memorialized profile: a pinned post, new friend requests, profile and cover photos. Never a login, never your messages. | Nothing on a timer: Facebook has no inactivity-deletion policy | |
| Inactive Account Manager | Up to 10 trusted contacts you chose | The data types you picked for each person, with a message you wrote; optionally the account then deletes itself | The whole account: Google can delete it after two years of inactivity | |
| Apple | Legacy Contact, unlocked by an access key | One or more legacy contacts; any one of them can act alone | Photos, messages, notes, files and device backups. Not purchases, not saved passwords. | Legacy access itself: three years after Apple approves the first request, the account is deleted |
Facebook: memorialization or deletion
Facebook offers two choices while you are alive: appoint a legacy contact to look after your memorialized profile, or have the account permanently deleted once Facebook is told you died. If you choose neither, the default is that only your main profile is memorialized once Facebook becomes aware of the death, which requires someone to report it.
A memorialized profile shows “Remembering” next to the name. Friends can share memories on the timeline, depending on your privacy settings, and everything you shared stays visible to the audience it was shared with. It stops appearing in People You May Know, ads and birthday reminders. No one can log in to it, and without a legacy contact no one can change it either; it is frozen as you left it.
The legacy contact, who must be one of your Facebook friends and can be changed at any time, gets a deliberately narrow role: they can write a pinned post (a memorial-service announcement, say), respond to new friend requests, update the profile and cover photos, download a copy of what you shared if you turned that permission on, and delete the account. They can never log in, read your messages, edit or remove past posts, or remove friends, and the role covers your main profile only, not any additional profiles.
Two edge cases worth knowing as of 2026: when a valid memorialization request comes in, a Page whose only admin died is removed from Facebook, and a group whose only admin died is paused.
Choosing deletion instead means that once Facebook receives proof of death, all of your messages, photos, posts, comments, reactions and info are immediately and permanently removed, across your main and additional profiles.
One honest warning about the settings: Meta is gradually moving people onto Meta Accounts in 2026, so the menus differ from account to account. The choice generally lives under Settings, then Accounts Center, under account ownership and control, but you may see either Accounts Center or the newer Meta Account settings, and not everyone has the option in Accounts Center yet. We cover the exact steps, and the documents Facebook accepts from families, in our Facebook guide.
Google: Inactive Account Manager and the two-year rule
Google’s answer is the Inactive Account Manager: a way to share parts of your account data, or simply notify someone, after your account has been inactive for a waiting period you choose. Google names death explicitly as one of the situations it is designed for.
You can name up to 10 trusted contacts and decide what, if anything, each receives: everything, only specific types of data, different selections for different people (though some information can’t be shared). Google asks for each contact’s phone number, used solely to verify their identity before any download. Nothing is sent at setup, and your contacts are not told they were chosen; they hear from Google only after the inactivity period has passed, in an email carrying a message you wrote and, if you chose to share data, the list of what you shared and a download link.
You can also have the account deleted once the notifications go out; that deletion is permanent, and a deleted Gmail address can never be used again by anyone.
The rule that applies to everyone else (anyone who never touched Inactive Account Manager) is the two-year rule. As of 2026, Google reserves the right to delete an inactive account, with its activity and data, once it has been inactive across Google’s products for at least two years. Reading or sending an email, using Drive, watching a YouTube video, sharing a photo, downloading an app, running a Google search or using Sign in with Google all reset the clock, and there are exemptions: accounts with current purchases or subscriptions, gift card balances, published apps with active transactions, digital purchases, and minors’ accounts managed through Family Link. Google sends warnings to the account and its recovery email first; December 1, 2023 was the earliest any account could be deleted under the policy. The practical translation: an untouched Gmail account does not wait for your family indefinitely.
Apple: Legacy Contact and the access key
Apple’s Legacy Contact is a person you choose to have access to certain data in your Apple Account after your death. You can name more than one, and any one can act alone, including permanently deleting your account data. The person needs no Apple device or Apple Account of their own, just to be over 13 (the age varies by region) when they file the request.
Setup requires iOS 15.2, iPadOS 15.2 or macOS 12.1 or later, signed in with two-factor authentication on. As of Apple’s April 2026 documentation, the path is Settings, your name, Sign-In & Security, Legacy Contact; the person you name gets a confirmation email.
Everything hinges on the access key generated during setup. You can send it by iMessage (if the person accepts, it is stored automatically in their own Apple Account) or keep a printed copy, a PDF or a screenshot. Apple’s own suggestion is to save a copy with your estate planning documents; take that literally, because Apple cannot access or replace a lost access key. When the time comes, your legacy contact needs both the key and a death certificate to request access.
What they get is broad: photos, messages, notes, files, device backups and more. What they do not get: movies, music, books or subscriptions you purchased, and nothing stored in iCloud Keychain: no payment information, no passwords, no passkeys.
Once Apple approves the first request, the contact gets a special Legacy Contact Apple Account, your original account stops working, and Activation Lock is removed from your devices so they can be erased and used again. A clock starts at that first approval: legacy access lasts three years, after which the account is permanently deleted. Whatever your family wants to keep, they must download within that window.
The law behind it: RUFADAA, and why the in-app setting outranks your will
The legal backbone here is the Revised Uniform Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act, RUFADAA for short, a model law published by the Uniform Law Commission in 2015 and since enacted in nearly every US state: 48 at last official count, plus the District of Columbia. The commonly named holdouts are Massachusetts and Louisiana.
RUFADAA sets a strict priority order for who controls a dead person’s digital accounts:
- First, the platform’s own online tool. If you named someone in Google’s Inactive Account Manager, Apple’s Legacy Contact or Facebook’s legacy contact setting, that designation overrides everything else, including your will.
- Second, if no online tool was used, whatever your will, trust or power of attorney says about digital assets.
- Third, if neither exists, the platform’s terms of service decide.
The law also draws a sharp line between the catalogue and the content of your communications. An executor can generally obtain the catalogue (the metadata, the who-and-when of your correspondence), but the content of messages requires your explicit consent or a court order.
The practical conclusion falls straight out of that list: the three platform settings above are tier one. Setting them up is the legally controlling act in 48 states. Your will still matters: it covers everything the tools do not, and it is where you grant the consent that unlocks content. But ten minutes in your phone’s settings do legal work a paragraph in the will cannot.
What your family can and can’t get without your help
Start with the hardest fact: no platform gives out passwords, to anyone. Google’s help page for families says it plainly: “We cannot provide passwords or other login details.” Facebook’s version is just as flat: “We can’t provide login information for someone else’s account,” adding that it is always against Meta’s policies to log in to another person’s account. Signing in with a password your person left behind violates the platforms’ rules, and on a memorialized Facebook profile it is impossible anyway.
What families can do with no preparation from you is limited. Anyone can report a death to Facebook, whose policy is to memorialize the main profile once a valid request is received. Immediate family or the executor can request full deletion; the fastest path is a death certificate, and without one Facebook asks for two documents: one proving authority, such as a will, and one proving the death, such as an obituary. Content from inside the account is another matter: Facebook says it considers those requests only “in rare cases,” requires proof that you are an authorized representative plus a court order, offers no guarantee, and treats the request itself as a report of the death, which triggers memorialization.
Apple without a legacy contact is the court-order path in its clearest form: Apple requires and verifies legal documentation, generally a death certificate and sometimes a US court order naming the deceased and their Apple Account, naming the requester, finding that the requester is the legal personal representative or heir whose authorization counts as “lawful consent,” and ordering Apple to assist. Families who only want the account gone can request deletion with legal documentation instead. A passcode-locked iPhone stays locked either way: Apple can’t remove the passcode without erasing the device. Apple concedes the point, noting that naming a Legacy Contact “can simplify the process of acquiring a legal order and reduce delay and frustration for family members.”
Google says any decision about a deceased user’s account is made “only after a careful review,” working with immediate family members and representatives where appropriate; in certain circumstances it may provide content. That is the no-preparation route on all three platforms: slow, document-heavy, discretionary, and never a password.
A 20-minute digital legacy checklist
Every item is free, reversible and takes a few minutes; together they put you in tier one of RUFADAA’s priority list in 48 states.
- Set your Facebook preference. Choose a legacy contact, or delete-after-death, in your account settings.
- Set up Google’s Inactive Account Manager at myaccount.google.com/inactive: pick your trusted contacts, your waiting period, and what each person receives.
- Add an Apple Legacy Contact in Settings, and make sure the access key actually reaches the person you named.
- Write down where the access key lives, ideally alongside your will and the other documents worth filling out before you die, so the person who needs it can find it.
- Tell one person. The tools only help if someone knows they exist.
Beyond the big three
Facebook, Google and Apple are the accounts with real death policies. The long tail is everything else: banking and brokerage logins, streaming subscriptions that keep billing until someone cancels them, photo services, loyalty programs, a domain name or two: the rest of those roughly 170 logins, each with its own terms and usually no legacy tool at all.
For that long tail, the problem is rarely access to any single account; it is the list itself: nobody knows what exists, what matters, and what you wanted done with each one. That is the gap Myend was built for. The Vault keeps a private record of the accounts and documents that exist and who should handle each one, and the Legacy Contact role names the person who gets that access when the time comes, a role about digital access, distinct from the legal executor who settles your estate. Both are part of a broader end-of-life plan, and both are free to start.
Twenty minutes on the big three, one list for everything else, and one person who knows where to look: that is the whole job, and today is a fine day to do it.
Frequently asked questions
Can my family just log in with my password?
Not without breaking the platforms’ rules. Meta states that logging in to another person’s account is always against its policies, and a memorialized Facebook profile blocks all logins outright. Google says it cannot provide passwords or other login details, and Apple’s legacy process deliberately issues the contact a new sign-in of their own rather than your old credentials. The built-in tools exist precisely so that nobody has to share a password.
Is it illegal to access a deceased person’s account?
It violates the platforms’ terms of service, and depending on where you live and the circumstances it may carry legal risk as well. Laws differ by state and country, and this article is not legal advice. The safer route in every case is the platform’s official process, and in 48 US states RUFADAA gives an executor a lawful path to request what the estate actually needs.
What happens if there’s no will?
The platform tools still work exactly the same: a legacy contact or an Inactive Account Manager designation sits at the top of RUFADAA’s priority order whether or not a will exists. With no will and no tools, control falls to the bottom tier, each platform’s terms of service, which in practice means memorialization or deletion at Facebook, a discretionary review at Google, and a documentation-heavy legal process at Apple. Setting up the free tools matters more, not less, when there is no will.
Do accounts get deleted on their own?
Google’s can: as of 2026, Google reserves the right to delete an account once it has been inactive for at least two years, with warnings sent to the account and its recovery email first. Facebook’s do not: there is no inactivity deletion, and a profile simply stands until someone reports the death. Apple’s three-year deletion clock only starts after it approves a legacy contact’s first access request.
