A digital executor is tasked with marshalling, procuring, protecting, and preserving an individual's digital assets and digital property.
A digital executor should be able to:
- Work under the direction of the estate executor
- Understand state and federal laws that relate to third-party access to online services
- Understand the limitations specified by terms of services agrreements with online account providers
- Freeze or close online accounts with banks, email providers, social networking sites, data storage, and shopping sites
- Safely and securely archive all digital data stored on local computing devices and online providers
- Plan and execute a reasonable security model for accessing archived digital files
- Build a secure and controlled "global" contact list that combines multiple address/contact lists
- Send notifications to select contacts in the global contact list
A digital executor must have a deep knowledge and understanding of desktop computers, laptops, tablets, mobile phones, and the operating systems they run (Windows, OSX, iOS, Android, Linux). They should be experienced with the most common online services including:
- document storage
- notes and clipping
- data storage
- cloud services
- domain registration
- digital currency wallets
- online games
An understanding of popular software applications in the following categories is important:
- Operating systems and their varying file and directory/folder organization, including where application data is stored on devices
- Digital storage device cloining and erasure (hard disks, ssd, usb drives)
- Financial management
- Web browsers, including their storage of cookies and passwords
- Password management apps that store usernames and passwords
- File encryption
- Music libraries
- eBook libraries
More about digital executors: The Digital Executor: A Client's Estate Plan CTO
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