What Happens to Someone's Online Accounts When They Die? A Digital Legacy Guide

We know how to live online. We do not yet know how to die online.

The average person in the UK leaves behind somewhere between 80 and 100 online accounts. Email, photos, banking, streaming, a Facebook profile with fifteen years of birthdays on it. When someone dies, all of it keeps running. Direct debits keep collecting. Reminders keep arriving. And the people left behind are handed a task no one prepared them for: closing down a digital life, one help page at a time, while grieving.

This guide explains what actually happens to online accounts after a death, what the law says in the UK, and the order to do things in. If you want the working version, with a direct link to the right form at every provider, it lives on our free Digital Legacy Checklist. No account needed, nothing saved to our servers.

Why digital accounts don't just close themselves

There is no central registry that tells the internet someone has died. Each platform has its own process, its own evidence requirements, and its own definition of who is allowed to ask. A death certificate opens some doors. Others want a grant of probate, a court order, or proof that the person planned ahead.

Two things make this harder than it should be. First, passwords are not the answer. Logging into someone else's account after their death can breach the provider's terms and, in some cases, the Computer Misuse Act. Every legitimate route goes through an official next-of-kin form, and no genuine provider will ever ask you for their password. Second, the accounts that matter most, photos and email, are usually the hardest to reach. Which is why order matters.

Start with the state, not the socials

Before any platform, two UK services clear most of the paperwork in about an hour.

Tell Us Once is the government service that reports a death to HMRC, DWP, the Passport Office, DVLA and the local council in a single call or online form. You will need the death certificate reference, their National Insurance number and date of birth.

The Death Notification Service does the same for most UK banks, building societies and insurers in one free submission. Between the two, the bulk of the official notifications are done before you touch a single social account.

Social profiles: memorialise or remove

For the platforms where their life was most visible, you generally have two choices:

1. Memorialising keeps the profile as a place of remembrance. Facebook adds the word "Remembering" above the name and freezes the account against logins. Instagram and TikTok offer similar routes. Friends can still visit, still see the photos, still leave a word on an anniversary. For many families this feels right, at least for a while.

2. Removal takes the profile down permanently. X, formerly Twitter, only offers deactivation, with no memorial option.

Most of these forms ask for a death certificate or a link to a published obituary, plus your relationship to the person. None of them is instant, so start early and expect a wait of days rather than hours.

Photos and devices: the part people get wrong

The most common and most painful mistake families make is factory-resetting a phone too soon. An unlocked iPhone or laptop is often the only remaining route into cloud accounts. Reset it last, not first.

Google offers the Inactive Account Manager, but only if the person set it up in life. If they did not, there is a next-of-kin request process for data or closure, and Google decides case by case. Expect to provide a death certificate and executor documentation.

Apple is stricter. If the person named you as a Legacy Contact before they died, you will have an access key and the process is straightforward. If not, reaching an Apple ID typically requires a court order alongside the death certificate. This is the single strongest argument for sorting your own digital legacy while you are well.

Microsoft and Dropbox both have deceased-user processes, and Dropbox in particular requires a court order naming the executor.

Subscriptions and money: last, not first

Streaming subscriptions are the easy wins. Netflix and Spotify can usually be cancelled with just the account email, no death certificate required. Amazon needs executor documentation but closing the account ends Prime and every subscription with it.

Financial accounts come last, once probate is granted, because the balances they release belong to the estate. PayPal will close the account and send any remaining balance to the estate by cheque. Crypto exchanges each run their own deceased-user process, and most want probate and often a court order, so keep every document you gather along the way.

The gap all of this leaves

Here is the part few guides mention. When the last account is closed, something quiet happens. The places where their life was visible online go dark, one by one, and the internet gradually forgets they were here.

The paperwork above protects the estate. It does not protect the memory. That is a separate job, and it is the one that matters longest: somewhere permanent for the photos, the stories, and the people who want to say their name out loud on the days that count. A tribute page is free, it always will be, and it becomes the one place their story stays once the platforms have gone quiet.

Handle the accounts gently, in the right order, with the checklist open beside you. Then, when the closing down is done, keep one light on.

Keep their candle lit.