Digital Legacy: What Happens to Your Files When You're Gone

Zero-knowledge encryption is a privacy feature while you're alive — nobody, including us, can read your files. But that same design means there's no customer support line that can unlock your account for your family later. Here's how to actually plan for that.

The trade-off nobody mentions

The whole promise of zero-knowledge encryption is that the provider never holds your key — which also means the provider can never hand it over, to anyone, for any reason, including a grieving family member with a death certificate. That's not a bug in the design; it's the entire point. But it means digital legacy planning has to happen deliberately, in advance, by you.

What actually needs to survive you

• Your account password — or better, your recovery token, generated at signup specifically for this kind of situation
• Instructions for who should get access, and when — immediately, or only under specific circumstances
• Context — a note on what's actually in the vault, so whoever inherits access knows what they're looking at

Where to actually store that information

Not in a plain text file on your desktop, and not only in your head. Reasonable options, often combined:

• A sealed physical document with a lawyer or executor, opened only per your will
• A password manager's built-in "emergency access" or legacy contact feature, if it has one
• A trusted family member holding a sealed copy, with clear instructions on when to open it

The recovery token generated when you sign up (mentioned in our FAQ) is designed exactly for this — it's the one thing that can restore access if the primary password is lost, so treat it with the same care as a will.

A simple plan that works for most people

1. Write down your account email and recovery token together, physically, not just digitally
2. Seal it with your other important documents — the same place a will or life insurance policy would go
3. Tell at least one trusted person that it exists and roughly where to find it, without necessarily giving them access now
4. Revisit it once a year, or whenever you change your password

Why this matters more, not less, with real encryption

Providers that can technically read your files can also technically hand them over to your family on request — which sounds convenient until you remember it means they could hand them to anyone else who asks convincingly enough, including in a data breach. Zero-knowledge encryption removes that risk entirely, but it moves the responsibility for continuity onto you. That's a fair trade, as long as you actually make the plan.