The Complete Guide to Digital Legacy Planning
Your digital life is vast, valuable, and vulnerable. This guide walks you through every step of organizing, securing, and passing on your digital legacy -- so nothing important is ever lost.
Why Digital Legacy Matters
The average person has over 100 online accounts. They hold bank credentials, family photos, cryptocurrency, insurance documents, business contracts, and decades of personal correspondence -- all behind passwords that only they know.
When someone dies or becomes incapacitated without a digital legacy plan, their loved ones face a painful, often impossible task: piecing together a digital life they were never given access to. Accounts go dormant. Money sits unclaimed. Irreplaceable photos disappear. Subscriptions keep charging. Legal and financial processes stall.
Digital legacy planning is the act of ensuring that none of this happens. It is not about preparing for the worst -- it is about taking care of the people who matter most, even when you are no longer able to do so yourself.
This guide will walk you through the process in six clear steps, from taking inventory to ongoing maintenance.
Step 1
Take Inventory
The first step in any legacy plan is knowing what you have. Most people vastly underestimate the breadth of their digital footprint. A thorough inventory is the foundation everything else builds on.
Financial Accounts
Bank accounts, investment portfolios, retirement funds, cryptocurrency wallets, PayPal, Venmo, and any platform where you hold monetary value.
Online Accounts
Email accounts, social media profiles, cloud storage (Google Drive, Dropbox, iCloud), streaming services, and software subscriptions.
Important Documents
Insurance policies, tax records, property deeds, vehicle titles, wills, power of attorney documents, and business agreements.
Digital Assets
Domain names, websites, blogs, NFTs, digital art, photography libraries, music collections, and intellectual property.
Personal Media
Photos, videos, journals, letters, and any digital content with sentimental value that you would want preserved.
Pro Tip
Start with the accounts that have financial value or could be used for identity theft. You can add sentimental items later. Most people discover 50-100+ accounts when they do a thorough inventory.
Step 2
Organize & Prioritize
Not all digital assets are created equal. Categorizing them by importance and sensitivity helps you decide how to handle each one and who should eventually receive access.
Critical
Assets with financial value or legal importance: bank accounts, crypto wallets, insurance policies, business documents. These need immediate attention in any legacy scenario.
Important
Accounts and documents that your beneficiaries will need to manage: email accounts, subscriptions to cancel, social media profiles to memorialize or close.
Personal
Items with sentimental value: family photos, personal journals, creative work. Not urgent, but irreplaceable and deeply meaningful to your loved ones.
Disposable
Accounts with no lasting value: old forum accounts, trial subscriptions, unused services. Document them so your beneficiaries know they can be ignored.
Pro Tip
Assign each asset a beneficiary now, even if informally. Knowing who should receive what makes the setup process much faster when you configure your vault.
Step 3
Secure Your Vault
Once you know what you have and how it is organized, it is time to store everything in a secure, encrypted vault. Keeplas makes this simple while maintaining military-grade security.
Secure Your 24-Word Recovery Phrase
When you create your vault, Keeplas generates a 24-word recovery phrase on your device. It is the root of your encryption -- written down by you, never sent to or stored by Keeplas. There is no master password to choose or forget: you sign in with a passkey or a one-time code, and unlock each device with a PIN or biometric.
Add Your Assets
Upload documents, enter credentials, and organize items into categories. Everything is encrypted on your device before it reaches our servers. You can add items one at a time or bulk import.
Verify Your Vault
Review everything you have stored. Make sure credentials are current, documents are legible, and nothing critical is missing. A vault is only as useful as its contents.
Pro Tip
Write your 24-word phrase on the printable Recovery Kit and store it in a safe or safety-deposit box. If you ever lose it, the only way back is Social Recovery through your trusted contacts (which you set up next) -- so both matter.
Step 4
Set Up Your Safety Net
A vault without an access plan is just a locked box. Keeplas provides three interconnected safety mechanisms that ensure your digital legacy reaches the right people at the right time.
Life Check
Configure how often Keeplas asks for a proof of life (weekly, monthly, or quarterly). If you stop responding within your chosen window, the system begins a verification chain -- reminders to you first, then your trusted contacts. Think of it as a wellness check for your digital life.
Emergency Contacts
Designate 3-5 trusted people who will be contacted if your Life Check triggers. These contacts verify your situation and, if needed, participate in the recovery process. Choose people you trust deeply and who are likely to outlive you.
Conditional delivery
Define exactly what happens under the conditions you set. You might release financial documents to your spouse once your Life Check and trusted contacts confirm an extended absence, or seal sentimental items for your children until a date or after confirmed passing. Each rule can have its own conditions, timing, and recipients.
Social Recovery
Set up Shamir Secret Sharing with your trusted contacts. Your master key is split into 5 shards, each wrapped with post-quantum ML-KEM-768 encryption. You pick the threshold (2-of-5 by default): that many contacts can cooperate to rebuild your vault if your phrase is ever lost -- and no single one can do it alone.
Pro Tip
Test your safety net after setting it up. Keeplas allows you to run a simulation to ensure notifications are delivered and your contacts understand their role.
Step 5
Communicate Your Plan
The best legacy plan in the world fails if nobody knows it exists. Communication is essential, but you do not need to share any secrets to make it work.
Inform Your Beneficiaries
Let the people in your plan know that you use Keeplas and that they are named as beneficiaries or emergency contacts. They do not need to know what is in your vault -- just that it exists and what their role is.
Explain the Process
Walk your emergency contacts through what will happen if your Life Check triggers. They will receive a notification, be asked to verify your status, and may need to submit their recovery share. A brief conversation now prevents confusion later.
Include It in Your Will
Mention your Keeplas vault in your estate planning documents. Your estate attorney should know about your digital legacy plan, even if they do not need the technical details.
Leave a Physical Note
Store a note in your physical safe or with your important papers that says: "My digital legacy is managed through Keeplas. Contact [emergency contact name] to begin the recovery process."
Pro Tip
You never share your recovery phrase or vault contents with anyone during this process. The whole point of Keeplas is that your secrets stay secret until the conditions you set are met.
Step 6
Review Regularly
Your digital life is not static, and your legacy plan should not be either. Set a recurring reminder to review and update your plan at least twice a year.
Update Credentials
When you change passwords or add new accounts, update your vault. Stale credentials are one of the most common reasons legacy plans fail.
Review Beneficiaries
Life changes -- marriages, divorces, births, deaths, falling-outs. Make sure the people in your plan are still the right people. Update your delivery rules and permissions accordingly.
Check Your Guardians
Verify that your Social Recovery guardians still have their shares, are still reachable, and are still willing to participate. Replace any guardian who is no longer suitable.
Test Your Setup
Run a periodic simulation through Keeplas to make sure everything works as expected. Confirm that email addresses are current and notifications are being delivered.
Pro Tip
Set a calendar reminder for January and July each year. Tie your review to an existing habit, like reviewing your finances or updating your insurance.
Frequently Asked Questions
quizWhat happens to my data if Keeplas shuts down?expand_more
Keeplas is fully open source, so you are never locked in -- you can self-host your own instance at any time. Your vault is encrypted with keys derived from your 24-word phrase, so any exported copy stays readable only to you. We also maintain a continuity plan that gives users advance notice and migration help.
quizCan Keeplas employees see my vault contents?expand_more
No. Keeplas uses zero-knowledge encryption: all data is encrypted on your device before it reaches our servers. We never receive your recovery phrase or encryption keys. Even under a court order, we can only hand over ciphertext that is useless without keys we do not have.
quizWhat if I lose my 24-word recovery phrase and have not set up Social Recovery?expand_more
Without Social Recovery, a lost recovery phrase means permanent loss of access. This is by design -- it is the same property that makes your vault secure against attackers, and even against us. We strongly recommend setting up Social Recovery with trusted contacts immediately after creating your vault.
quizHow is digital legacy planning different from a regular will?expand_more
A traditional will handles physical assets and finances through legal processes. Digital legacy planning covers the hundreds of online accounts, digital documents, crypto assets, and personal media that a will typically cannot address. The two are complementary -- your will should reference your digital legacy plan.
quizCan I share specific items without giving full vault access?expand_more
Yes. Keeplas delivery rules allow granular control. You can designate specific vault items for specific beneficiaries. Each item is independently encrypted, so sharing one item does not expose anything else in your vault.
quizHow do I get my family members to take this seriously?expand_more
Focus on the practical impact: what would happen if they were suddenly locked out of a shared bank account, lost access to irreplaceable family photos, or could not locate an insurance policy? Most people understand the value of digital legacy planning once they realize how much of their life exists only online.
Start Your Legacy Plan Today
You have read the guide. You understand the steps. Now it is time to act. Create your Keeplas vault in minutes and start securing the digital assets that matter most.