Preserve your data for posterity! Version 2.0.1, updated February 2, 2024 How do you want to be remembered? A will takes care of your physical possessions, but what about your digital life—photos, email, files, online accounts, and so on? If you want to pass your electronic ephemera on as part of your digital legacy, turn to tech expert Joe Kissell for advice on dealing with large quantities of data, file formats, media types, the need for a “digital executor,” and more.n We all have digital data that's important to us now, but a lot of it could also be important to our children, friends, and relatives long after we're gone. But you have to take concrete steps now to make sure that data is preserved in the right way and handled according to your wishes. It’s not all about posterity either, since following Joe’s advice will also help loved ones access your key accounts and important info if you’re temporarily incapacitated, which can happen at any time. The book will help you with these essential tasks: • Identify your key digital assets: online accounts, photos, audio files, videos, passwords, documents, email, and more. • Plan for each type of digital asset based on your priorities for today, for shortly after you are no longer around, and for posterity. Joe explains the ideal file formats to use, how to deal with social media sites, the best ways to digitize paper documents and photos, and strategies for sharing passwords with family members, among much else. • Communicate your wishes in a “digital will” and designate someone to be its “digital executor.” The book includes a template document that you can develop into a personalized digital will. • Preserve your data for the future. You’ll consider types of archival storage media, cloud-based storage services, backups, and what instructions to provide about maintaining your data as file formats and storage media types evolve. Whether you just want to ensure that your heirs get copies of your favorite family photos and a few key documents or you want to catalog and preserve tens of thousands of digital items, this book helps you make smart decisions about your digital legacy. Questions answered include: • What strategies can I use for sorting and preserving email and instant messages? • How can I ensure that my email account(s) will be available to those wrapping up my estate? • What if I have digital data that should be destroyed when I die? • What should I do with my huge photo collection (both digital and paper)? • How should I pass on control of my Apple, Google, and Microsoft accounts? • How can I make my passwords and passkeys available to those who will need them—but keep them private for now? • What should I think about when handing down purchased audio and video files? • What should happen to my Facebook account when I’m no longer around? • What choices are available for keeping my digital archive available and backed up? • How long should I expect archival media to last? • Should I write an autobituary? • Are online digital legacy services any good? • How will organizing all this stuff benefit me while I’m alive?

Do you know what will happen to your digital "stuff" when you die?No? Rest assured, you are not alone. This increasingly important but relatively unknown subject involves what happens to all of your accounts, social media, emails, photos, and documents and how you will be remembered in your online afterlife.This book will let you take control of your online afterlife and ensure that your important digital assets are treated according to your wishes. Given that the average person spends close to seven hours per day online it's a must-read for everyone.Death: of course it's not an easy subject for any of us. Indeed, there are few subjects more difficult to discuss or imagine than death. It's like we'd rather talk about anything else than the one universal experience we all share. But it's now one that also needs to be addressed in the digital age. Digital Legacy: Take Control Of Your Online Afterlife provides both the context of how we got here but also the right guidance to move forward with your planning today. Authored by two tech executives (also former Googlers) and founders of the digital-legacy platform GoodTrust -- Daniel Sieberg and Rikard Steiber, CEO and founder of GoodTrust -- the book outlines the pitfalls, challenges and opportunities that are important for all of us to tackle.

Digitize your documents and reduce paper clutter! Version 4.0.1, updated February 2, 2024 The paperless office doesn't have to be a myth! Turn paper into usable digital files, reducing clutter and increasing convenience. This book helps you assess your situation, develop a strategy, and learn clever techniques for keeping more paper at bay—with detailed discussion of the hardware, software, and processes needed to get the job done. Join Joe Kissell as he helps you clear the chaos of an office overflowing with paper. With Joe's guidance you can develop a personal clean-up strategy and choose your tools, including a scanner and the software you need to perform OCR (optical character recognition). You'll also learn about devices and services for storing your digitized documents and document management apps that help you categorize, locate, and view your digital document collections. Once you have your gear in hand, Joe shows you how to convert your paper documents to digitized files and gives you ideas for how to organize your office workflow, explaining how to develop day-to-day techniques that reduce the amount of time you spend pressing buttons, launching software, and managing documents. You’ll also master paper-reducing skills such as: • Scanning or photographing documents you find while out and about—business cards, receipts, menus, flyers, and more—so you keep only digitized versions. Joe discusses a variety of mobile scanning options for iOS/iPadOS and Android. • Creating a digitized image of your signature so you can sign and share documents digitally, rather than printing them for the sole purpose of signing them with a pen. • Using paperless options for bills, invoices, bank statements, and the like. • Cutting down on unwanted catalogs and junk mail. • Switching to (mostly) paperless postal mail. • Using your computer to send and receive faxes without a fax machine, fax modem, or separate phone line. (Amazingly, some people still need to do this even in the 21st century!) The book contains answers to numerous questions, including: • What is a searchable PDF, and why is it key to a paperless office? • What differentiates document scanners from other types of scanners? • What’s a book scanner? • What if I need a mobile, portable scanner? • What does TWAIN stand for, and should my scanner support it? • Why do I need OCR software, and what features should I look for? • How do I choose a good scanner and OCR software? • How should I name and file my digitized documents? • What are my options if I need to edit a scanned PDF? • How can I automate my workflow for scanning documents? • What paper documents should I keep in physical form? • How do I use common tools to add a signature to a PDF? • How can I access my digital documents remotely? • How should I back up my important digital documents?

No? Rest assured, you are not alone. This increasingly important but relatively unknown subject involves what happens to all of your accounts, social media, emails, photos, and documents and how you will be remembered in your online afterlife.This book will let you take control of your online afterlife and ensure that your important digital assets are treated according to your wishes. Given that the average person spends close to seven hours per day online it's a must-read for everyone.Death: of course it's not an easy subject for any of us. Indeed, there are few subjects more difficult to discuss or imagine than death. It's like we'd rather talk about anything else than the one universal experience we all share. But it's now one that also needs to be addressed in the digital age. Digital Legacy: Take Control Of Your Online Afterlife provides both the context of how we got here but also the right guidance to move forward with your planning today. Authored by two tech executives (also former Googlers) and founders of the digital-legacy platform GoodTrust -- Daniel Sieberg and Rikard Steiber, CEO and founder of GoodTrust -- the book outlines the pitfalls, challenges and opportunities that are important for all of us to tackle.

Almost without realizing it, we have shifted toward an all-digital culture. Future heirlooms like family photos, home movies, and personal letters now exist only in digital form, and in many cases they are stored using popular services like Flickr, YouTube, and Gmail. These digital possessions form a rich collection that chronicles our lives and connects us to each other. But have you considered what will happen to your treasured digital possessions when you die? Unfortunately the answer isn’t as certain as we might presume. There are numerous legal, cultural, and technical issues that could prevent access to these assets, and if you don’t take steps to make them available to your heirs, your digital legacy could be lost forever. Written by the creators of TheDigitalBeyond.com, this book helps you secure your valuable digital assets for your loved ones and perhaps posterity. Whether you’re the casual email user or the hyper-connected digital dweller, you’ll come away with peace of mind knowing that your digital heirlooms won’t be lost in the shuffle. “Death is the final frontier of cyberspace—and this book provides a road map to the key issues, problems and future prospects for bridging this ultimate transition with dignity, security and grace.” — Daniel “Dazza” Greenwood, Executive Director of the eCitizen Foundation “To be ahead of one’s time usually means stepping to the side of one’s time in order to see it clearly. This book does just that, putting our digital lives and afterlives into sharp focus. Fascinating.” — David Eagleman, neuroscientist and author

Managing the Digital You: Where and How to Keep and Organize Your Digital Life is a much-needed guide for those struggling with how to manage and preserve their digital items. Starting with a values assessment, this book helps readers identify what items are important to them personally so that they can effectively prioritize their time and effort. Covering multimedia, correspondence, legacy planning, password protection, photos, non-digital documents, financial and legal documents, and even social media archiving, this comprehensive text addresses how to get started and how to develop a plan for managing existing and future items. Features include: Value assessment exercises to help readers identify what is a preservation priority to them personally Best practices for managing digital financial and legal documents How to save things from multiple devices, as well as social media sites Recommendations for scheduling maintenance activities and automating backup Guidelines for creating a personal management plan so that users are prepared to handle new and existing documents, photos, and other digital material for ongoing access After reading this short primer, readers will be ready to: better organize and identify what they already have in a digital form, have a personal plan for knowing what to discard and what to retain, know how to digitize papers, photographs, voicemail, preserve email and social media postings, and set up a workable long-term file naming and organizational structure.

10 Simple Steps to Get Your Digital Life in Order was written to help families handle their digital assets, including emails, photos, social media profiles, and more, during a time of need. While even the most simple tasks seem challenging right now, this book helps you easily and quickly understand and address the complicated nature of our digital lives.