Are Digital Estates one of the Next Cybersecurity Challenges?

When we think about estates, we often think about physical assets: homes, vehicles, investments, and personal belongings that are passed on to future generations. Yet in today's connected world, many people possess another type of asset that receives far less attention: their digital estate.

A digital estate consists of the online accounts, digital identities, social media profiles, content, followers, and digital assets that individuals accumulate throughout their lives. But have humans ever thought about what happens to these assets when they are abandoned, forgotten, sold, or left behind? One thing is clear and fast becoming eminent, as the value of online identities continues to grow, a new challenge that sits at the intersection of cybersecurity, digital ownership, privacy, and platform governance is emerging.

A social media account is no longer just a profile. For many individuals, it represents years of effort, reputation building, audience growth and trust. Some accounts have accumulated thousand and even millions of followers. Others hold years of personal content, professional networks, and digital influence. As a result, abandoned accounts are increasingly viewed as valuable assets rather than dormant profiles. But unknown to many people, an entire market has emerged around buying and selling social media accounts. This means an account that was built by one person is later used by someone entirely different. The digital identity remains, but the individual behind it changes.

This growing trade in digital accounts challenges the assumption that the person behind the account today is the same person who built the account yesterday. For example, imagine following a technology expert for several years on his social media account. The account posts insightful content, builds credibility, and earns a loyal audience. Then after a while, original owner eventually loses interest and sells the account or the original owner dies and the account is abandoned. Months later, the same profile begins promoting unrelated products, investment schemes, or even political content and the audience may never realize the ownership changed.

This change of ownership means trust has become transferable and raises important questions which are becoming increasingly difficult to ignore. Some of these questions include but is not limited to: Should digital identities be treated as transferable assets? , Should followers be informed when ownership changes?, Does the value belong to the account owner, the platform, or the community that helped create its influence? This change of ownership also means the account retains the trust earned by its previous owner while serving the interests of a new one. This creates a fertile ground for misinformation, fraud, impersonation and social engineering attacks. In addition to the above, it also introduces a new cybersecurity challenge where established digital identities can become high-value targets for account hijacking, unauthorised transfers, identity abuse and malicious actors seeking to exploit the credibility and trust built by someone else.

It is obvious that most platforms were designed around the concept of individual ownership but only a few designed with digital inheritance, account transfer or long-term identity stewardship in mind. As digital estates become more common: platforms, tech professionals, organisations and all involved stakeholders may need to rethink how online identities are managed. Potential approaches could include but is not limited to: Allow users designate digital heirs, trusted contacts, or successor administrators who can manage accounts under predefined conditions; Introduce transparency mechanisms that notify followers when account ownership changes; Develop clearer frameworks for inheritance, archival access and account retirement; Apply enhanced security monitoring to inactive accounts to reduce the likelihood of hijacking and unauthorised access; Create systems that distinguish between inherited, transferred and original ownership to maintain transparency within digital communities and a host of other approaches.

In conclusion, digital estates already exist in some sense but the question is whether society is prepared to treat digital identities with the same seriousness as physical assets. For decades, people have invested time, creativity, and effort into building online reputations that generate influence, economic value, and social trust. Yet there remains little consensus on who owns them, who inherits them, and how they should be governed after they are abandoned. Lastly, we all should remember that the next major cybersecurity challenge may not come from new technology but from the millions of digital identities already in existing accounts that continue to hold value long after their original owners have moved on.