Digital Property and Ownership – What You Need to Know 

Techopedia defines digital assets as:

A digital asset is any text or media that is formatted into a binary source and includes the right to use it; digital files that do not include this right are not considered digital assets. Digital assets are categorized into images and multimedia, called media assets, and textual content.

If you’re not fluent in tech-speak, here’s the translation:

A digital asset, also known as digital property, is essentially any online page that formally represents your brand or your company. Here are the most common examples of digital property:

• Social media pages
• Business directory listings (like Google My Business or Yelp)
• Website host (the entity that hosts your website, like GoDaddy or Host Gator)
• Google Analytics
• Website domain (essentially your web address, like mycompany.com )
• Website Content Management System (the "back end" of your website, like Duda, Joomla, or WordPress)

To many of us, owning a piece of digital property is a pretty abstract idea. These aren’t tangible things and, in cases like hosting and domains, you can’t even actually  see them. But these assets are very real and for some of them, you’re probably paying a monthly or yearly fee.

 So why does it matter who technically  owns these assets? The answer is two-fold. Here’s why:

First, and most importantly,  if you don’t own your digital assets, you can’t control them  . The second part of this is, if you don’t own your digital assets, you may not be able to access them when you need to.

Here are some practical examples to help you understand.

Your IT Director purchased your domain name, set up hosting, and built your website. He paid for everything with your company credit card, so you assumed everything was fine. But the IT Director left the company a few months ago and you’re just learning that everything he purchased and set up was done in  his name.  Now he’s the registered owner of your domain name and hosting – not your company. He knows the logins and the passwords and since you’re not the registered owner, you’re going to have a hard time accessing those accounts.  In essence, he  owns those pieces of digital property, even though he is no longer with your company.

This is a very clear example of someone else owning your digital property, because someone else’s name is registered on the accounts. But what about digital assets that don’t really require a registered user? You can lose control of those, too. Consider this:

You’ve hired a social media manager who set up Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram accounts for your company. After some time, you weren’t getting the results you wanted so you fired the social media manager. Now you’re trying to login to your company’s Facebook account, but you can’t because you don’t know the password, the email associated with the account, or any of the security questions.

Even though you don’t pay for social media accounts and your employee didn’t technically register as the owner of the account, they’re still inaccessible to you.

Much like social media accounts, your business directory listings should have multiple administrators and a master file with the current passwords. If you find a directory listing for your business that you don’t control, reach out to the directory (Google Business Profile, Yelp, etc.) directly for help.

 Are you noticing a theme here? If you guessed passwords, you’re right. While it’s not specifically mentioned in each entry above, protecting your passwords is essential in safeguarding your digital property. We recommend using a password manager like a free LastPass account that has the added benefit of generating strong passwords.

Sometimes it’s as simple as contacting a platform for a password reset, but sometimes it’s as serious as suing someone for control of your domain. The type of digital property doesn’t matter—keep track of your passwords in a secure place and never share your passwords with anyone unless it’s essential for their job function.

Nee more help? Reach out to us at Locallogy. We're internet marketing experts and we love answering questions and helping our clients learn more about the digital marketing space.