Today, almost all of us have some form of a digital presence. It could be photos stored in cloud storage, years of WhatsApp chats, or an Instagram or YouTube profile. Some of us even have digital assets worth monetary value, like crypto.

But have we thought about what happens to them when we are no more?

Experts say most people are unprepared. In fact, less than 10% of Indians even have a regular will.

So, what happens to our digital lives when we die?

To find out, I spoke to a will-making expert, a tech lawyer and a crypto entrepreneur. Tune in to the latest episode of The Signal Brief to learn more.

The Core produces The Signal Brief. Follow us wherever you get your favourite podcasts.

NOTE: A machine transcribed this episode. A human has looked at this text but there might still be errors. Please refer to the audio above, if you need to clarify something. If you want to give us feedback, please write to us at feedback@thecore.in.

TRANSCRIPT:

Kudrat (Host): In April of last year, Shaishav Dineshbhai Shah died suddenly in Gandhinagar, Gujarat, leaving behind his wife and daughter.

What ensued wasn’t a classic property battle.

Rather, his daughter wanted access to her dad’s Apple iCloud account, containing thousands of photographs, videos, documents, voice notes, and contact lists.

But Apple refused, saying it could only give access if her father had previously appointed her as a legacy contact.

So the Shah mother and daughter approached a local court, which later ruled in their favour.

In a landmark judgment delivered on May 5th, 2026, the court held that the digital data stored in the iCloud account forms part of the deceased’s estate and granted the daughter access.

Kudrat (Host): This is a unique case, nothing like this has happened before in India.

For centuries, inheritance was fairly straightforward. When someone died, their family inherited things like homes, jewellery, bank accounts and land.

But today, a growing share of our lives exists online.

Thousands of photos sit in cloud storage. Years of conversations live inside WhatsApp chats and emails. Some people even earn a living from YouTube channels, Instagram accounts and podcasts. Others hold investments in crypto wallets that no bank can access.

So when we die, what happens to all of it? Who gets access to our photos and messages? Can a family inherit a creator's income? What happens if nobody knows the password to a crypto wallet?

My name is Kudrat Wadhwa and you’re listening to The Signal Brief. We don’t do hot takes. Instead, we bring you deep dives into the how and why of consumer trends.

In today’s episode: what happens to our digital life and assets when we’re no longer alive?

Kudrat (Host): Today, almost all of us have some form of a digital presence.

We bank online. We store our photos online. We message online. Some of us even make a living online.

But while we're building digital lives, very few of us are planning for what happens to them when we're gone.

I spoke to Nikhil Varghese, co-founder of Yellow, a platform for will-making.

He says that while younger people occasionally ask what happens to their Instagram or Gmail, most conversations are still about traditional assets.

Nikhil Varghese: I mean, it also depends on which age bracket you are actually talking to, right? Now, if you're looking at somebody in their 40s, 50s or so, I don't think anybody places so much prevalence or, you know, priority over your digital footprint. At least that's my take in terms of what I hear. Pretty much, it's more about conversations around your assets, basically your tangible, intangible assets. That's pretty much coming into the picture, right?

But I think the awareness about digital footprint and other things is more among youngsters, is what I would say. You know, you could kind of correct me there, but that's where questions also arise, and at least in the past, questions that have come our way have been from youngsters saying, "What happens to my Gmail? What happens to my Facebook?" Of course, users are not so much from the younger categories, at least if I were to say, but "What happens to my Instagram account? What happens to YouTube?" and so on and so forth, right?

Kudrat (Host): Nikhil added that in India, most people don’t even consider making a regular will—less than 10% of Indians have one, according to estimates.

You might assume that after you die, your family can simply access your accounts.

But that's not often true.

Unlike your house or your bank account, your Gmail or Instagram profile sits on someone else's platform. And those platforms each have their own rules.

Nikhil Varghese:  One, if you look at Gmail, for instance, there are only two things that you can do with Gmail, right? On demise, you request Gmail to shut down the account. I don't think you even get a backup, right? You can shut down the account, and in fact, Gmail has a clear path in terms of what needs to be done so that things can be done. You can go to the Google Workspace or Gmail account help section, you'll find the way in case you can nominate and get someone to use and shut down the accounts, right?

Similarly, for Facebook also, you can nominate someone to memorialise your account. Now, what that means is that your account still continues, but nobody who has the authority can delete or change any comments. But your friends and followers can still comment on your page, right? It continues to be active. So that's something which is available with Facebook. When it comes to Instagram, nothing along those lines is available. All that you can do is request Meta to kind of shut down the account.

Kudrat (Host): Google allows users to nominate someone through its Inactive Account Manager.

Facebook allows accounts to be memorialised.

Instagram generally allows families to request that an account be removed.

Apple has its own Legacy Contact feature.

If you’ve planned properly, there are ways for your nominees or successors to access your memories.

But it’s not just memories, right?

For some, their online assets have monetary value too. These could be crypto holdings. Creator income. Or digital businesses.

And, it can be much more complicated to access those.

I spoke to Prateek Gupta of Mudrex, a centralised crypto exchange. He told me that most crypto holders aren’t thinking of what happens after them as yet.

Prateek Gupta: We've never received any inbound request from any of our users pertaining to this query, which also brings me to my first point that most people actually do not think about, at least, their crypto inheritance and what happens to it if they die, right? So with respect to your other asset classes like stocks and mutual funds, etc., there is a SEBI-mandated inheritance process, right? So while you are creating your account itself, you do a nomination process, and that's how it's taken care of, right? Whereas in crypto, at least in India, I can say that it's not mandated by any of the regulatory authorities. So there isn't a very defined process for it, not on Mudrex, not on any other centralized exchanges like CoinDCX, etc.

Kudrat (Host): Prateek distinguished between centralised and decentralised platforms.

Prateek Gupta: If a Mudrex user did not do any kind of planning, still, in the unfortunate event of their death, their family members can always reach out to us, and the crypto is not lost. We still continue to hold the crypto with us with the same institutional-grade custody security as we would for all other assets.

Whereas if you only stored your cryptocurrencies in a self-custody wallet like MetaMask or cold wallets like Ledger, etc., there is no mechanism. You cannot do anything. There's no grievance redressal mechanism. There's no one to reach out to in case you have not actually planned for it.

Kudrat (Host): If you’ve stored crypto in a decentralised wallet, you can only access it through your keys. Lose the keys, and it’s gone forever.

Prateek’s practical tip: etch your keys on a metal plate.

Prateek Gupta: A metal plate is better than a piece of paper because it's waterproof and it's not prone to corrosion, etc. So it's slightly better.

But at the end of the day, the central advice here, whether it's a piece of paper or a metal plate, etc., is that you should do it offline, right? Just storing it in an email or storing it in an unencrypted text file... Some people might think, "Oh, my nominee is my wife or my brother, and then I'll just email them my private keys." That is something I won't advise because you're leaving it very prone to getting hacked and making it very easy. So any form of offline mechanism is the best way to go about this. Yeah.

Kudrat (Host): So far, this may sound like a simple planning problem—keep passwords safe, nominate someone, tell your family.

But what if you haven’t done any of that? Or what if the platform simply won’t hand over access?

Tech lawyer Akash Karmarkar explained why digital succession is legally tricky.

Akash Karmarkar:  The problem really is that physical assets are owned by you. Digital assets, you typically host on somebody else's platform, and that distinction becomes very important because you're typically trying to retrieve a person's data. That data could be in the form of photos, videos, content, whatever have you, hosted on some third-party platform. That's what requires some sort of law in India to explain that you have a right to retrieve that data from the third-party platform.

Kudrat (Host): The Gandhinagar court solved one family’s problem by treating digital data as part of the estate. But the bigger picture remains unresolved. There is no comprehensive law in India for digital succession.

Akash Karmarkar: I think digital succession has been contemplated by a number of other countries. The EU has very forward-looking legislation. Again, it doesn't specifically look at digital succession, but it gives you a broader set of rights which you could potentially apply to be able to get access to a person's account. Again, the issue really is, how do you balance the interplay between a person's privacy and the right of their successors to access their data? So, to answer your question very pointedly, I don't think there's any other country which has specifically mandated the right to digital succession or the right of a successor of a person to be able to appropriate or inherit their data hosted on a third-party platform.

Kudrat (Host): Right now, there’s no clear legal framework.

For ordinary people, passing on digital assets can be as simple as sharing passwords with the executor of your will. But for creators and investors, it needs much clearer instructions.

Akash Karmarkar: I think for folks who are not influencers, they would have a simpler path to being able to have their digital assets passed on to someone else, and passing the baton is not particularly difficult for them because what they would essentially do is give an account password, or they would essentially give access to the account's credentials to the executor of their will, who will do as they say.

For influencers, because there's also a stream of income coming from their accounts, or at least typically that would be the case, you would want to have a set of very clear protocols.

Kudrat (Host): And here’s an important caveat—you may not want your family to access everything.

For example, you might want them to access your photos, but not your private chats.

Akash Karmarkar: I think if a person doesn't have very clear instructions, this is where it becomes important for people to be very prescriptive in their wills and ensure that they have clear instructions on what they want and what they don't want to be transferred onto their heirs and successors. It's a bit of a tricky mix because you may not want your personal messages to be shared with your successors. You may also be okay with your successors taking over your accounts, but only after your personal messages have been deleted.

Kudrat (Host): The Shah family's case began with one daughter trying to recover memories of her father.

But today, most of us have both a physical and a digital life, making the idea of digital succession pertinent to us all.

And though we've figured out how to inherit the first, we're still figuring out the second.

Outro: That's all for today. You just heard The Signal Brief. We don't do hot takes. Instead, we bring you deep dives into the how and why of consumer trends. The Core produces The Signal Brief. Follow us wherever you get your favourite podcasts.

To check out the rest of our work, go to www.thecore.in.

If you have feedback, we'd love to hear from you. Write to us at feedback@thecore.in or you can write to me personally at kudrat@thecore.in.

Thank you for listening.