How do I close the online accounts of someone who has died?

This is slow, repetitive administration done at the worst possible time. It goes faster with a list and an order. The important distinction throughout is between closing an account, which providers will help with, and getting the data inside it, which they mostly will not without a specific legal basis.

Safety

Step by step

1. Get several certified copies of the death certificate.Almost every organisation wants one and many will not return it quickly. Ordering extra copies at registration is far cheaper and faster than ordering them later.
2. Use Tell Us Once for government.The registrar offers this service in most of the UK. One notification covers HMRC, DWP, DVLA, the Passport Office and the local council. It does not cover banks or online services.
3. Deal with the money first.Banks, building societies and card providers all have bereavement teams. The Death Notification Service lets you notify several financial institutions at once. Do this before the platforms, because it stops payments and starts the estate process.
4. Stop the recurring charges.Subscriptions keep taking money until cancelled: streaming, cloud storage, mobile, broadband, memberships, app store subscriptions. A bank statement is the fastest way to find the full list. Cancelling the card alone can leave a debt rather than closing the service.
5. Use each platform's own deceased-user process.Google has Inactive Account Manager if the person set it up, and a request process for closure or, in limited cases, data. Apple honours a Legacy Contact if one was nominated, and otherwise requires a court order. Meta will memorialise or delete an account, and a nominated legacy contact can manage a memorialised profile. Microsoft, Amazon and most others have equivalent bereavement forms.
6. Be realistic about the contents.Photographs, emails and messages are often unrecoverable without a legacy contact set up in advance or a court order, because providers treat them as private communications. Where photographs exist on a phone or computer you have, take a copy from the device before anything is reset.
7. Preserve before you delete.Once an account is deleted it is gone. Download what the estate is entitled to first, and agree with the family what is being kept — messages and photographs matter more to people later than they expect.
8. Watch for fraud in the following months.Deceased identities are targeted for credit applications. Notify the credit reference agencies, and consider a protective registration with the fraud prevention service in the deceased person's name.
9. Keep a record of what you closed and when.Reference numbers, dates and who you spoke to. Estate administration is examined later, sometimes years later, and a list saves a great deal of argument.
10. Set up your own arrangements while you are here.Nominate a legacy contact on the platforms that offer one, keep a list of accounts where an executor can find it, and never put passwords in a will, which becomes a public document.

Tips

• Do not close the person's email account early. It is the recovery route for everything else and closing it makes the remaining accounts far harder to deal with.
• The Death Notification Service and Tell Us Once between them cover a large share of the notifications, and both are free. Use them before working through anything by hand.
• Where a person ran a business, a social account or a domain, deal with those early — domains expire and business pages can be lost with the personal account they were attached to.

Common mistakes

• Signing in with their password to sort it out — It breaches the terms, and where an account is later disputed it can make the position much worse. Use the bereavement route.
• Closing the email account first — It is the key to every other account. Close it last.
• Cancelling the card instead of the subscription — The service continues and the debt accrues against the estate. Cancel each subscription with the provider.

Questions people ask