The administration of a person’s estate containing digital assets and a digital legacy is a new frontier in Canadian and U.S. estate law. This newsletter will address some of the legal privacy issues that may create challenges faced by estate trustees in Canada in executing their responsibilities to determine, secure, and protect the digital assets and digital legacy of a decedent.

- Digital Assets -

Digital assets are made up of the intangible footprints that individuals leave behind. They are defined as any digital material owned by an enterprise or individual including text, graphics, audio, video and animations. Examples include: computers, flash drives, IPods, tablets, blogs, Facebook accounts, Twitter accounts, multiple email accounts, photos on Flickr, documents in Google docs; information stored in LinkedIn, videos on YouTube, online bank and investment accounts, online subscriptions, and online shopping accounts.