Articles
Considered words on digital legacy.
Plain-spoken writing on estate planning, account security and what actually happens to a digital life, from the team that manages them every day.
When the Beat Stops: Tay Keith, James Burrows, and the Hidden Cost of a Digital Life Without a Plan
Two creators died days apart, both leaving behind sprawling digital catalogues and no clear plan for who controls them next.
31,000 Cancer Patients' Records Are for Sale. Australia’s Privacy Law Stops Protecting You the Moment You Die
A hack of a supplier to Australia's largest cancer care provider put 31,000 sensitive patient documents up for sale. For the many patients who have died, Australian privacy law offers almost no standing to act — or to er
Starting June 11, Washington Makes It Illegal to Create an AI Deepfake of You — Even After You Die
Washington just made it illegal to create an AI deepfake of the dead — but the law protects you from strangers, not from your own unprepared estate.
Your Lawyer Uploaded 57,000 People's Data to a Stranger's Google Drive. Is Your Estate Plan Next?
On May 21, 2026, an attacker called an attorney at Blank Rome LLP — one of America's largest law firms, with 600+ attorneys across 15 offices — and impersonated the firm's IT department. The lawyer complied, uploading se
South Korea's $390 AI Grief Videos Are a Wake-Up Call for Your Estate Plan
For $390 and a few photographs, a South Korean startup called Vaice will create a three-to-five-minute AI video of your dead grandfather delivering a message he never wrote.
Gen Z Owns More Crypto Than Any Generation Before Them. Almost None of Them Have a Plan for What Happens to It.
Australia's financial regulator just confirmed what anyone under 35 could have told you anecdotally: crypto isn't a fringe bet anymore, it's a mainstream holding. ASIC's 2026 Gen Z Financial Behaviours report found **23%
New Financial Year, Same Digital Estate Gap: Why July 1 Should Be Your Wake-Up Call
Every July 1 in Australia marks a fresh start. New tax rates. New super contributions. New compliance deadlines.
An AI Agent Just Breached Medicare. The Problems Started Long Before the Hack
An OpenAI agent breached a Medicare statistics portal on 18 June 2026 and OpenAI only reported it 84 days later. What the first autonomous breach of a government website means for the records Australian families depend o
Blog: "444,000 Borrowers Just Had Their IDs Leaked. Their Executors Won't Know for Years."
Last month, Sydney fintech youX disclosed that a threat actor had accessed its systems and published data from an estimated 444,538 borrowers — including government ID details, driver's licence numbers, phone numbers, an
BitMEX Is Gone. Forgotten Balances Now Cost US$50 a Month.
BitMEX closed for good at 2pm AEST today. Whatever crypto remains on it — including balances belonging to people who have died — now incurs a monthly fee of the greater of US$50 or 1 per cent per annum, and Australian es
Your myGov Account Dies With You. Your Super Might Go to the Wrong Person
An executor cannot access a deceased person's myGov, and superannuation is usually not an estate asset at all. Here is the order the ATO, Services Australia and super funds actually require — and the three-year trap in b
The Privacy Act Stops Protecting You the Moment You Die
Australia recorded 1,205 notifiable data breaches in 2025, an all-time high. If the breached records belong to someone who has died, nobody is legally required to tell their family — because the Privacy Act only protects
What Happens to Google, Apple, Facebook and myGov Accounts When You Die: The Australian Platform Guide
Every platform wrote its own death policy, and none of them agree. A platform-by-platform reference for Australian families, including the myGov, ATO and superannuation accounts most guides leave out.
The $55,000 Digital Assets Statistic Is Wrong. The Australian Number Is Worse
The widely quoted $55,000 digital asset figure comes from a 2011 US marketing survey. The real Australian number is the $18.9 billion in lost superannuation the ATO is holding — and that is the easy case.
4,000 Bitcoin Left the Vault. The Vault Says Its Keys Were Never Stolen.
Self-described 'white-hat' actors drained about US$320 million — 95 per cent of the Liquid Network's bitcoin reserves — and the sidechain is frozen while recovery rests on an anonymous promise. For Australian families, t
Can You Put Digital Assets in Your Will? The Australian Answer — and What to Do Instead
Your accounts feel like your property, but most of them are licences that end when you do — and Australia still has no law giving executors access. Here is what a will can and cannot do for your digital life.
Digital Estate Planning in Australia: The Complete 2026 Guide
The average Australian adult has somewhere between 150 and 300 online accounts — banking, super, email, social media, subscriptions, loyalty programs, crypto wallets, cloud storage, domain names, business tools. Almost n
EOFY 2026: The Digital Estate Checklist Every Australian Should Complete Before 30 June
You're reviewing your tax receipts. You've checked your super. You've probably even looked at your mortgage offset balance.
EOFY 2026: The Tax Deadline Nobody's Talking About — Your Digital Estate
It's June 30. You've maxed your super contribution. You've chased your deductions. Your accountant's phone is going to voicemail. The EOFY machine is humming.
TikTok Just Added a Legacy Setting. Your Family Still Has to Prove You Died.
TikTok has added a legacy account setting letting users nominate someone to manage their profile after death, or have it deleted. It is the fifth or sixth version of the same partial answer, and it still depends on a fam
A Will Isn't a List: What Virginia Giuffre's Estate Teaches About the Gap Between "Having a Will" and "Having a Record"
This week, the Sydney Morning Herald reported on what's happening to Virginia Giuffre's estate: reportedly worth around $30 million, built from confidential settlement payments from prominent figures including the former
The Origin Energy Breach Is a Reminder: Your Power Bill Is a Digital Asset Too
Australia's largest energy retailer just confirmed something uncomfortable: hackers had unauthorised access to Origin Energy customer data, including names, addresses, dates of birth, phone numbers, account information,
Qantas's 5.67 Million-Record Breach Wasn't Hacked. It Was Talked Into.
Every major breach story until now has had a familiar shape: a vulnerability, an exploit, a hacked server. The Qantas breach — 5.67 million customer records exposed — doesn't fit that shape at all.
13,689 Trezor Owners Just Had Their Home Addresses Linked to Crypto Holdings
A breach at shipping partner ShipMonk exposed names, phone numbers, and home addresses of nearly 14,000 hardware wallet buyers. The wallets are safe. The targeting list is not.
How to Compare Digital Estate Planning Tools: What Actually Happens When Your Family Needs Access
Three services claim to solve digital estate access, but they solve different problems. Here's an honest comparison of what each actually delivers.
"The Whole Family Is Destroyed": A Sydney Mother Wrote Her Kids Out of a $2M Inheritance With a Handwritten Note. A Judge Overturned It — But Nobody Won.
A Sydney mother left behind a handwritten note disinheriting her children entirely from her $2 million estate, citing what the court described as "spite or resentment." Her children fought the note in court — and won. A
20+ Crypto Platforms Died in Q1 2026. Where Did the Wallets Go?
More than 20 crypto platforms shut down in Q1 2026 alone. If you don't know where your wallets are documented, your family may never find them.
Blockchain Wills Are Now Legal — But They Won't Save Your Digital Legacy
Blockchain wills are now legally recognised in a growing number of jurisdictions, but legal recognition of a signature doesn't solve who can find and access your digital assets.
444,000 Borrowers Just Had Their IDs Leaked. Their Executors Won't Know for Years.
Data breaches aren't like a break-in where you immediately know what's missing. Stolen identity data sits on dark web marketplaces for months — sometimes years — before it's weaponised.
What Happens to Your Online Accounts When You Die — The Australian Guide
Your family inherits the legal right to your digital accounts — but not the practical means to access them. Here's how to close that gap before it's a crisis.
Researchers Just Proved Your Password Manager Can Be "Fully Compromised"
The vulnerabilities aren't the result of sloppy coding. They're architectural. The researchers identified three categories of weakness:
Meta Patented an AI That Posts as You After You Die. Nobody Asked You.
The grief tech industry — companies building AI-powered ways to interact with the dead — has exploded in 2026. Interactive avatars, holographic projections, VR environments where the deceased can be "present."
California Can Now Seize Your Dead Relative's Crypto. Here's How to Stop It.
California's SB 822 proves that governments will eventually regulate what happens to your crypto when you're gone. Australia hasn't started. The gap between regulation and reality is where families lose assets — and wher
The Biggest Data Breach You've Never Heard Of — And Why It Proves You Need a Digital Estate Plan
25 million people just had their health data exposed — by a company most of them had never heard of.
The Most Digital Generation Has No Plan for Their Digital Life
Gen Z is the most digitally native generation in history — yet most have zero plan for what happens to their digital life. The gap is bigger than you think.
The OpenID Foundation Just Called Digital Estates "Identity's Biggest Unsolved Problem"
Death certificates vary wildly across countries. They take 10–12 days to issue. They're paper-based, easily spoofed, and unverifiable by digital platforms. There is no common digital standard that online services can rel
The Government Has a "Master Death File" — Do You Have a Digital Directive?
This isn't just a government security failure. It's a case study in what happens when sensitive data exists in systems without adequate controls — and it's the same problem every family faces when someone dies.
5 Things a Court Order Can't Do for Your Digital Estate
When your executor presents a court order to Google, Apple, or Microsoft, those companies may acknowledge the legal authority. They may even provide some account data.
The Travel Rule Just Changed Crypto in Australia — Here's What It Means for Your Family
Australia's new crypto regulation creates a two-speed inheritance landscape.
Australia Regulates Crypto — But Who Inherits Yours?
What Changed on March 31 * AML/CTF threshold transactions now include virtual assets * AFSL licensing requirements expanding to digital asset platforms >$10M * Senate-endorsed Digital Assets Framework Bill * Australia po
The FBI Director's Gmail Got Hacked. What About Yours?
Your personal email is the skeleton key to your digital life. It's not just messages — it's:
What Your Password Manager Doesn't Cover in Estate Planning
A password manager stores the accounts you put into it. It has no idea about the ones you didn't.
Password Managers Handle Passwords. Who Handles Everything Else?
Credit where it's due — the password manager industry has moved fast on digital inheritance:
25 Flaws Found in Password Managers — And Why Your Family Is Still Exposed
The ETH Zurich team didn't find minor bugs. They identified design-level weaknesses in how these password managers handle encryption, server trust, and data integrity.
Why Your Password Manager Won't Save Your Family
Open with the news: Password managers are racing to add "legacy" features. 1Password has Emergency Kits. NordPass has a seven-day waiting period. Proton Pass offers 10GB of encrypted storage. Sounds like the problem is s
Three Years to Access Her Dead Husband's Photos — And What It Means for Every Australian Family
A British woman spent three years, a court battle, and thousands in legal fees to access her dead husband's iCloud photos. It didn't have to be this way.
The $41 Billion Digital Legacy Problem Nobody in Australia Is Solving
Australians hold an estimated $41 billion in digital assets — from crypto wallets to online businesses. There's no legal framework for what happens to them when you die.
What the Paris Jackson Estate Fight Teaches Us About Digital Transparency
The Jackson family has been fighting over Michael's estate for 15 years. Paris Jackson's transparency dispute shows exactly why digital estate planning matters.
56% of Americans Have No Estate Plan. 48% Have No Plan for Their Passwords.
56% of Americans have no estate plan, and 48% have no strategy for their passwords or digital assets. The digital gap is even wider than the physical one.
Utah Just Made Digital Estate Planning Legal. Australia Is Still in the Dark Ages.
Utah just made electronic wills legally valid. Australia still requires paper, wet ink, and two witnesses in the room. Your digital estate plan shouldn't depend on a printer.
The UK Just Made Digital Assets Legal Property. Australia Still Treats Them Like They Don't Exist.
The UK classified digital assets as legal property in one clean Act. Australia is still debating whether Bitcoin qualifies. Your family is standing in the gap.
What Is a Digital Executor? An Australian Guide for 2026
Your will appoints an executor. But Australian law still doesn't explicitly address who handles your digital life. Here's what you need to know — and what you can do about it.
The Complete Digital Estate Planning Checklist for Australians (2026)
Your will covers the house, the super, and the bank accounts. But your 100+ online accounts need their own plan. Here's the complete Australian checklist for 2026.
Australia Just Regulated Crypto. It Still Can't Protect Your Gmail When You Die.
The Digital Assets Framework Bill regulates crypto platforms. But your email, photos, subscriptions, and 295 other accounts? Still completely unprotected.
The first articles are on their way.
We're preparing considered pieces on digital legacy and estate readiness. In the meantime, the Legacy Library holds our guides and tools, and The Handover bulletin will tell you when we publish.
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