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like The Internet Archive would help in that regard but I don’t know how many people are actively searching for an archived version of a website when they can’t access it on it’s actual domain.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?
The email is stored on a server. The domain DNS points the appropriate URL at your matching email configuration. Someone registering your domain doesn’t give them information about the previous DNS configuration, name servers, and certainly not your server cpanel login credentials. So no, they wouldn’t get access to your emails. They could re-create the same email address using their new setup, but all of the previous email contents would still be sitting on your server. Someone could potentially use the matching email address to retrieve account resets from services you’re registered to, but they would need to know your exact email address and there would probably still be some additional roadblocks.
Regarding your blog and that sort of stuff. If you want it to persist after you die, then you should will it to someone, along with renewal information, admin access, and probably some money to cover the expenses. If you use a password manager like LastPass then you can set someone up as an emergency contact, and they can retrieve all of your logins after you die. They basically send a retrieval request, and if you don’t respond to block it in the given time period, it allows them to log in as if they were you.