A lot of folks suggest getting your own domain name for having control over your online presence but the question that I have always had is what would happen to them when I die?
Wouldn’t the domains eventually expire and anyone else would be able to register it and access my email attached to that domain? With that email, they can theoretically get into all my accounts which don’t have 2FA on (a lot of the sites just don’t have the option to turn on 2FA) via the ‘Forgot my password’ services?
Similarly, if I have a blog or website that I have poured my heart and soul into for my entire life, wouldn’t that just go down forever when the domain expires? Maybe services like The Internet Archive would help in that regard but I don’t know how many people are actively searching for an archived version of a website when they can’t access it on it’s actual domain.
I understand that after I die, all of this wouldn’t by my concern and wouldn’t matter but I still think about this a lot.
To the people who have their own domain, email and/or blogs, what are your thoughts on this?
What do you care? You are dead.
In general, everything will stick around as long as you paid for it. Your email account and your web site will probably be unceremoniously deleted once the money runs out, and the domain name itself will be freed up. While you use your domain to point to your web site and your email account, they won’t be associated forever: Once they expire, the name is available for someone else to fill it with new content, not to get access to your existing content.
Oooooor: You could bequeath all your online assets to a family member in your will (don’t forget to give them all relevant passwords), possibly along with some money to keep paying for the domain registration, email- and web hosting.
While they may not directly get access to content after a domain has been recycled… nothing would really stop someone from registering your domain, and setting up your same email address again. Which would then give them access to basically all of your old accounts just by clicking on forgot password links.
Now is that likely to happen to a random person? Not likely, but there’s not really anything to prevent it. Most services don’t prune old unused accounts very often, or ever really.
Yeah but these days, if someone sets up mobile verification or 2FA, it’s not going to be that easy going through forgot password links. Codes will just be sent to a mobile phone or a recovery address that most likely won’t be seen and it’ll force the individual wanting access to go the route of hacking means.