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22,000 Photos and Zero Plan
What a digital thanatologist taught me about the logins I'll leave behind
The day before I spoke at the She Leads AI CREATE Conference in Salt Lake City, my bangs were in my face. And I knew they'd drive me nuts on stage.
So I found a little salon downtown, and a stylist came out from her lunch break to fit me in. She asked what brought me to town. When I said a women's AI conference, I got the look. The eye roll. The "Oh. Okay." I get it a lot from Gen Z.
Fair enough. There's a whole lot of AI out there that's icky. But we can't put the genie back in the bottle. So the question I keep asking is how we use these tools responsibly, in ways that give people access to tools and help they wouldn't normally have.
One of the examples I gave her came from Niki Weiss.
Niki is a digital thanatologist. Before CREATE, I had no clue what that meant. She talks about death and dying in the digital age, and she's on a mission to help a million people build what she calls a final playbook.
My camera roll is an estate
Niki asked the room how many photos we had on our phones. My answer: 22,000. Someone else had 35,000.
I'm never going to scroll through 22,000 photos. Niki's point is that they still define who I am. And they're one digital asset out of hundreds. The generations before us left a box of photos. We're leaving a cloud account behind a face scan.
Then she made it concrete. Say you get hit by a bus and your phone gets destroyed with you. Every account you own sends its two-factor code to that phone. Your family is locked out of your life.
A preview I didn't ask for
Recently, my credit card got compromised. The bank sent a new number, and I found out fast how many things were quietly billing that card. Every "your payment did not go through" email sent me hunting for a login I may or may not still have.
The upside: I cut a bunch of subscriptions I didn't need. Niki calls that digital hygiene.
Now picture someone else doing that cleanup. Without my phone. Without my passwords. Without me. As a solo founder, my business runs through my logins: client files, invoices, email, websites. That's a lot riding on one device.
The setting I didn't know existed
Niki walked us through Legacy Contacts on iPhone. I had never heard of it. Settings, tap your name, Sign-In & Security, scroll to the bottom. You can name up to five people who can get access to your phone's data after you die.
Niki recommends three, and her reason is the kind of thing only a thanatologist says out loud: "What if the two of you are in the car accident together?"
She also said something about tech companies that I think every woman building online should hear: "The phone companies have more control and know more about you than the government does." Naming your people is how you take some of that control back.
This is the AI I want to talk about
"AI is changing the way we die," Niki told me. Her company, ENDevo, uses an agentic platform to walk you through the pressure-testing questions most of us avoid: legal, financial, physical, digital. You come out with a PDF playbook for your loved ones and a project plan to get it done.
That's the example I wanted the stylist to hear. AI that helps you do a hard, human thing you've been putting off, and do it well.
I'm heading home for Thanksgiving excited to have this conversation with my family. Yes, it's a bummer to think about. I already feel more empowered to start those conversations with the people I love.
Niki's line for it: live slowly, die ready.
Takeaways
Your photos, logins, subscriptions, and business accounts are part of your estate.
Set up Legacy Contacts on iPhone or Inactive Account Manager on Google.
Name three people you know, love, and trust. One name is a single point of failure.
Keep passwords in a notebook and a password manager.
Plan for incapacity, too. Bills don't pause.
Use AI to work through the hard questions so your family isn't left guessing.
Keep building and keep reigning with AI.
