Digital legacy: the Dutch wake-up call

Who inherits your passwords? That question echoed through Dutch parliament this summer, and for good reason. Three quarters of the Netherlands has arranged nothing for what should happen to accounts, photos and subscriptions after a death. Seventy percent has never even heard of the concept. If you want to arrange your digital legacy, you are in a small minority for even thinking about it. The families who never did are the ones who feel it.

Here is what is happening in the Netherlands right now, what a digital legacy actually includes, and how to get yours in order in an afternoon.

Why the Netherlands is suddenly talking about it

For years, digital inheritance was a topic for specialists and the occasional forward-thinking notary. That is changing. Dutch MP Barbara Kathmann is calling for a national awareness campaign, and her party will present a plan after the summer to make the subject a fixed part of government policy. The reason is practical rather than political: surviving relatives keep getting stuck. Bills that keep charging, photo albums nobody can open, accounts released only after months of paperwork.

Seniors’ organisations see the same thing. ANBO-PCOB and SeniorWeb are jointly publishing a digital legacy guide for their members on 1 August. And starting this year, crypto platforms report their customers’ holdings to the Dutch tax office, which means heirs will more often discover digital assets they cannot reach. We cover that in inheriting crypto.

The subject has stopped being a niche. But no law or campaign will sort out your household. That part stays yours.

What your digital legacy includes

The term sounds abstract, but the contents are concrete:

• Email. The hub of everything, since almost every other account can be recovered or closed through it.
• Banking and subscriptions. From online banking to the streaming service and the energy supplier that keeps collecting each month.
• Photos and documents in the cloud. The most commonly missed item, and the hardest loss when access disappears.
• Social media. Profiles can be removed or memorialised, if someone knows it is possible.
• Government logins. Important for settling affairs, and bound by strict rules.
• Crypto and other digital assets. Without the keys, this wealth is gone for good.

One look at that list explains why a note with three passwords does not cover it. What you leave behind is not an account or two but an entire digital household, with bills, memories and obligations of its own.

How to arrange it, step by step

The basics take an afternoon, which surprises most people. I built Kinfolder because I kept noticing the same gap in my own circle: careful people with wills and insurance in order, and not one of them could say where their partner’s accounts lived. The obstacle is rarely unwillingness. It is that nobody knows where to begin. The full version lives in our digital legacy checklist; this is the short route.

1. Map what you have

Go through your phone and laptop and note the accounts that matter. Not every old forum needs to make the list. Email, bank, insurance, cloud storage, social media, phone contract, and anything holding money or memories: those do.

2. Record where things are, not the contents

You do not need to write passwords on paper. Record where someone should look and how access is arranged. How to do that safely, without handing anything over today, is covered in leaving your passwords to loved ones.

3. Choose one trusted person

Pick the person who should eventually have access: your partner, an adult child, a close friend. Tell them the overview exists and where to find it. A secret plan nobody knows about helps nobody.

4. Keep it in one place

Scattered notes go stale without anyone noticing. Choose one place and walk through it once a year. Paper works, though it has risks of its own. Kinfolder was built for exactly this: one encrypted family folder, shared only with the person you choose, only when it matters.

No need to wait for the government

Maybe a campaign will come, maybe even legislation. The families dealing with this today get no help from either, and the numbers show how far behind most households are. The encouraging part is that your share of the work is small. A list, a place, a person who knows. Arrange it once and it rarely needs your attention again.

Start small: open Kinfolder in your browser and fill in the first section. The rest follows.