# Digital Account Continuity Study 2026 — Methodology

**Publisher:** LIFELOOK Editorial Team  
**Review date:** August 25, 2026  
**Study ID:** `lifelook-digital-account-continuity-2026`

## Research question

What continuity controls do eight consumer services publicly document for people preparing their accounts and data for absence, incapacity, or death?

## Fixed sample

The study uses a purposive, non-representative sample selected before coding:

- Consumer account ecosystems: Apple and Google
- Social/profile services: Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and X
- Credential managers: 1Password and Bitwarden

Each service holds content or credentials that may matter to a family and had discoverable English-language consumer documentation on the review date. The sample was designed to compare different account types, not to estimate market-wide prevalence or rank providers.

## Evidence rule

Only official provider help, support, privacy, or product documentation was used to code controls. Official documentation is primary evidence of what a provider publicly states; it does not establish that a request will be approved, that a workflow will operate as expected in every jurisdiction, or that documentation is complete.

LinkedIn's two official Help pages returned server errors during collection. Saved official search-result snippets are retained as an auditable search record, but they are not treated as substitutes for fetched primary pages. LinkedIn's export and deceased-account cells therefore remain `unclear`.

All sources were accessed on August 25, 2026. When a page displayed no publication or update date, the source registry says `not stated`. Relative search-result dates were preserved as relative labels rather than converted into unsupported exact dates.

## Codebook

Each service-control cell is `yes`, `no`, or `unclear`.

- `yes` — An official page explicitly documents the control for ordinary consumer accounts.
- `no` — An official page explicitly rules out the control or documents a process that excludes it.
- `unclear` — The reviewed official materials do not establish either answer. Missing search evidence is never converted into `no`.

### Controls

1. **Named pre-arranged access** — The user can designate a person or emergency contact before incapacity or death through a provider feature.
2. **User-configured account inactivity plan** — The user can configure an account-level inactivity period that triggers notification, selected-data sharing, or account deletion. Ordinary app or vault auto-lock does not qualify.
3. **Self-service export** — An authenticated user can export a substantive copy of their own content or vault data through an official consumer workflow.
4. **Survivor/deceased-account request** — The provider publishes a specific process for a survivor or authorized representative after a user's death.

## Important distinctions

- A legacy contact may have limited management rights rather than account login.
- A survivor process may offer memorialization, removal, closure, or a discretionary content request; it does not imply that credentials or data will be released.
- A manual recovery document is described separately from provider-mediated named access.
- Session auto-lock, vault timeout, and provider-enforced inactivity policies are not user-configured continuity plans.
- Facebook and Instagram were coded separately. A Facebook feature was not inferred to apply to Instagram.

## Reproducibility

`dataset.json` is the source of truth. `analyze.mjs` validates every service-control cell, confirms every cited source key exists, computes counts, writes `analysis.json`, and creates a long-form CSV. The script also calculates a SHA-256 checksum for the input dataset.

Run from the repository root:

```text
node research/digital-account-continuity-2026/analyze.mjs
```

No network access is required to reproduce the published counts from the reviewed dataset.

## Limitations

- The sample is purposive and small; percentages describe only these eight services.
- Provider documentation can change after the review date.
- The study measures documented controls, not usability, security, completeness, legal enforceability, or request outcomes.
- Plans, regions, account types, age restrictions, and proof requirements may affect availability.
- `unclear` is not evidence that a feature does not exist.
- No customer, respondent, usage, or private account data was collected.
- LIFELOOK LLC publishes LIFELOOK+, so this is company-authored research rather than independent validation. The evaluated providers were not asked to review the coding before publication.

## Corrections

Corrections and updated official documentation can be sent to `privacy@lifelook.app`. A correction should identify the service, control, official source URL, and relevant wording.