Your digital estate in Switzerland: accounts, passwords and photos
Your digital estate includes email accounts, social media profiles, cloud photos, subscriptions, domains and crypto assets. Legally, all of it passes to your heirs. In practice, though, families often get stuck on passwords, two-factor locks and provider terms. You can sort it out in three steps: create an inventory of all your accounts, decide for each account what should happen to it, and store the access details securely. On top of that come the legacy tools from Google, Apple and Facebook, which you should activate today.
What belongs to your digital estate
Your digital estate covers more than most people think. If you live online in Switzerland, you quickly end up with dozens of accounts. The most important categories:
- Email accounts: the control center. Password resets for almost every other service run through your main address.
- Social media: Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, WhatsApp and other profiles.
- Cloud storage and photos: Google Photos, iCloud, Dropbox. Often the only copies of the family pictures live here.
- Subscriptions and contracts: streaming, software, newspapers. They keep running after death until someone cancels them.
- Domains and websites: your own domain, a blog, an online shop.
- Crypto assets: Bitcoin and other coins. Without the private keys, they are lost for good.
- Payment services and e-banking: Twint, PayPal, logins for banks and brokers.
The legal position in Switzerland: heirs yes, access difficult
Switzerland has no dedicated law on digital estates. The general inheritance law of the Swiss Civil Code applies: on death, your rights and obligations pass to your heirs as a whole. Lawyers call this universal succession.
In practice, access is difficult all the same. You need to distinguish three cases:
- Locally stored data on a laptop, phone or hard drive belongs to the estate along with the device. Without the PIN or password, though, that does not help your heirs much.
- Online accounts are governed by the provider's terms of service, often under foreign law. Many providers refuse heirs access, citing data protection, or demand extensive proof.
- Digital assets such as bank balances or cryptocurrencies clearly belong to the estate. With crypto, however: no keys, no access, not even with a certificate of inheritance.
The conclusion: do not rely on the legal position. What counts is what you prepare while you are alive.
The legacy tools of the big providers
The big platforms offer their own features for the event of death. They are free, set up in a few minutes and take effect directly with the provider. Activate them first.
| Provider | Feature | What you decide |
|---|---|---|
| Inactive Account Manager | After three to 18 months of inactivity, Google notifies up to ten trusted contacts. You decide which data they receive, such as Gmail or Google Photos. Alternatively, the account is deleted automatically. | |
| Apple | Legacy Contact | You name a trusted person in your Apple ID settings. They receive an access key and can later request access at digital-legacy.apple.com with the key and a death certificate. |
| Legacy contact and memorialization | You choose whether your profile is memorialized or deleted after your death. A legacy contact can look after the memorialized page. |
Most other services offer no such tool. There, the only thing that helps is what you document yourself.
Step by step: how to put your digital estate in order
Step 1: Create an inventory
Make a list of all your accounts. Three sources will help you: the apps on your smartphone, your browser's password store and your email inbox. Search it for terms like "welcome", "invoice" or "subscription".
For each account, note the service, the username and what the account is for. For e-banking, naming the bank is enough: heirs get access there with the certificate of inheritance, they do not need your login. If you prefer a guided approach: the interview in beizeiten has a section on your digital life that walks you through the most important accounts and devices systematically.
Step 2: Decide for each account
Decide what should happen to each account. There are usually four options:
- Delete: the default for most accounts and subscriptions.
- Memorialize: on Facebook or Instagram, the profile can remain as a page of remembrance.
- Transfer: important for domains, websites or an online shop. Decide who takes them over, otherwise they simply expire.
- Back up, then delete: for cloud photos, first name a person who downloads the pictures.
Put these wishes in writing. You can draw up such instructions separately and refer to them in your will. For binding arrangements under inheritance law you need a professional, such as a notary. No online tool replaces that advice.
Step 3: Store the access details securely
The best plan is useless if nobody can get into the accounts. Two logins are decisive: your main email account and your smartphone PIN. With those, most other services can be reset.
Store these access details so that a trusted person can find them in an emergency, but nobody else can. Proven options are a password manager with emergency access or an encrypted list on a storage device in a safe or bank deposit box. The guide Storing passwords for emergencies shows how to set this up in practice.
Why password lists do not belong in the cloud
A spreadsheet in Dropbox or a Google Doc with all your passwords is tempting, but a bad idea. Three reasons:
- Unencrypted documents in the cloud are a rewarding target for attackers. A single cracked account opens all the others.
- You hand control of highly sensitive data to a provider whose terms you do not set.
- In the event of death, the list sits in precisely the kind of account that gets locked. Right when it is needed, nobody can reach it.
A locally kept list is safer. That is why beizeiten works local-first: your entries stay in your device's browser storage, no server sees them. As a backup, you get an encrypted export (AES-256-GCM) as a file you can keep on a USB stick in a safe. Together with the printed dossier, your loved ones then know what exists and where it is.
Keep it current and connect it to the rest of your planning
A digital estate is never finished. New accounts appear, passwords change. So set a fixed date once a year to review your inventory and check the provider tools.
And remember: your digital estate is only one part of your planning. Everything else your family has to take care of after a death, from notifying the municipality to the certificate of inheritance, is covered in the death checklist for Switzerland.
Quick questions
What happens to my email account if I make no arrangements?
Many providers automatically delete accounts after longer periods of inactivity, sometimes including all emails and photos. Without preparation, heirs often get no access because providers cite data protection and their terms of service. That also means losing the invoices, contracts and recovery emails that run through this address.
How do I pass on cryptocurrencies safely?
Without the private keys or seed phrase, the assets are lost for good. Keep the seed phrase offline, for example on paper or a metal plate in a safe, and record where it is and how the wallet works. For balances held on an exchange, heirs can approach the provider directly with the certificate of inheritance.
Can I still sort out the digital estate of someone who has died?
Yes, but it takes more effort. Google, Apple and Meta have request procedures for surviving relatives, usually requiring a death certificate and proof of entitlement. Without tools activated in advance, the providers decide case by case, and that can take weeks to months. A complete list of the deceased person’s accounts makes the work far easier.
Do purchased e-books, films and music belong to the estate too?
Usually only to a limited extent. On many platforms you do not buy files but a personal usage license, and that often ends with death. Locally stored copies without copy protection, on the other hand, pass to the heirs with the device. If you have a large media collection, check the terms of the provider in question.