Confronting mortality is a deeply personal quest that does not usually sit high on one\u2019s to-do list. Death is scary so we avoid thinking about it. At some point, though, pragmatism usually wins. Those who can afford to call their lawyers and those who cannot pull out a notebook. It is decided: who inherits the house, which lucky friend gets the music collection, how to settle outstanding bills.<\/p>\n
As the divide between real and online identity dissolves, a necessary but morbid conversation is gaining traction on the internet. What happens to your email account when you die? What about your Facebook<\/a> profile or your photo albums on Flickr? Who will get the few hundred rands in your PayPal<\/a> account? How will your Twitter<\/a> followers know you have passed on? In short, do you have a digital death plan?<\/p>\n Popular Canadian blogger Derek\u00a0 Miller did. The day after he died on May 3 last year, the 41-year-old delivered a poignant message from beyond the grave<\/a> that went viral and had readers, including me, reaching for a Kleenex.<\/p>\n \u201cHere it is,\u201d he wrote. \u201cI am dead and this is my last post to my blog. In advance, I asked that once my body finally shut down from the punishments of my cancer, then my family and friends publish this prepared message I wrote \u2014 the first part of the process of turning this from an active website into an archive.\u201d<\/p>\n Miller, who started blogging in 1997, was proud of the archive he had built over a decade and gave considerable thought to managing his digital legacy. He would have been pleased to know that his final post has been \u201cliked\u201d more than 31\u00a0000 times on Facebook and has received more than 1\u00a0260 comments to date.<\/p>\n Planning ahead<\/strong><\/p>\n Miller was a rarity. Most people have not planned ahead for their imminent digital death. A survey<\/a> last year commissioned by cloud computing company RackSpace estimated that Britons could have at least \u00a32.3-billion worth of personal information such as videos, books and photos stored in the cloud. But only 11% of respondents surveyed had left or planned to leave passwords to their \u201cdigital treasures\u201d in their will \u2014 not really smart of the remaining 89%.<\/p>\n \u201cIt is a good idea to give a trusted person your primary access credentials and including them as part of a will is a good way to do it,\u201d said Paul Jacobson, a South African digital media lawyer and director of web.tech.law. He suggests using a password management service such as LastPass or 1Password to manage your passwords for various accounts. \u201cAside from the security benefits, these services also offer a way for your family members to access your cloud services when you are gone.\u201d<\/p>\n I share a Google<\/a> Docs file with my husband in which we keep an updated list of our important accounts \u2014 email, social media, online banking. A spouse or partner is the most obvious choice to be your \u201cdigital executor\u201d, but if yours has temperamental, scheming, Blair Waldorf or Brooke Forrester tendencies, do not even think about it.<\/p>\n Instead, consider using a \u201cdigital estate planning\u201d service such as AfterSteps, Legacy Locker or SecureSafe. They all work in a similar way: you upload your documents, photos and login details, specify what you would like to happen to those accounts posthumously and then appoint beneficiaries who will receive this data by email after you die and, hopefully, carry out your wishes.<\/p>\n Of course, these services need to know of your death before this can happen. Two of your beneficiaries must report it to them with a copy of your death certificate and their identity documents. Premium pricing plans offer unlimited data storage and password listings and cost between $4 and $12 a month. It is like Dropbox<\/a> for death for a few dollars.<\/p>\n Death policy<\/strong><\/p>\n You can go an eerie step further and use GreatGoodbye or Dead Man\u2019s Switch to send emails to friends and family after your death. The concept is simple: sign up, write your heartfelt messages, select recipients and then log in periodically to verify that you are alive. If you do not do so after three email reminders, Dead Man\u2019s Switch will assume the worst has happened and release your emails. If you are travelling or without web access for a while, it is possible to postpone the verification process so that the service does not contact you during that period.<\/p>\n In recent years, the major social networking sites have put death policies in place to address concerns from users (and parents of teenage users) about what happens to their profiles after they pass on. If they leave behind login details, it is easy for family members to fulfil their wishes, but without this it can be a mission.<\/p>\n Take the case of Anthony \u201cTJ\u201d Cannata. Before he committed suicide last December, the 20-year-old posted a new Facebook profile picture \u2014 of himself holding a gun to his mouth. His friends and family emailed Facebook to take down the traumatic photo immediately, but it was removed only a month later after persistence from Cannata\u2019s family and growing media attention.<\/p>\n Facebook requires that a family member provide a copy of the death certificate and proof that he or she is a legally recognised representative of the deceased. According to figures floating around the web, anywhere between two and five million Facebook profiles belong to dead users. But the social network has yet to come up with an automated way to identify them.<\/p>\n For now, it relies on memorial profiles to keep the site from turning into a digital graveyard. To memorialise a profile, a friend or family member of a dead user must fill out a request form and provide Facebook with a copy of the deceased\u2019s death certificate or obituary.\u00a0 Once a profile is memoralised, it is converted into a tribute page where only existing friends can view it and post messages of condolence. It will not appear in non-friends\u2019 search results or under \u201cpeople you may know\u201d. But be prepared to wait \u2014 it could take two weeks or longer for a removal or memorial request to be honoured.<\/p>\n If I Die<\/strong><\/p>\n Social networks have also become the go-to gathering place for users to grieve or champion a cause, such as \u201cFree photographer Anton Hammerl\u201d. The Facebook campaign was set up by family friends Bronwyn Friedlander and Anso Thom on April 12 last year, a week after the award-winning photographer was captured by Gaddafi loyalists in Libya.<\/p>\n Curiosity got the better of me so I recently installed Facebook\u2019s If I Die app. A short video urged me to write or record my final words to be published to my Facebook profile. I was asked to choose three Facebook friends as \u201ctrustees\u201d who will be responsible for notifying Facebook of my death, thereby giving the network the go-ahead to post my last words. Mine is: \u201cTesting, testing. How can I tell if it works?\u201d<\/p>\n Twitter will not hand over a deceased user\u2019s password under any circumstances because of privacy rules. To close a Twitter account, a verified family member or executor must submit paperwork including his or her identity document, the deceased\u2019s death certificate and a signed statement requesting that the account be deactivated. Twitter can provide a copy of the deceased\u2019s public tweets on request.<\/p>\n Google offers everything from email to blogging and social networking but, except for Gmail, it has no clear death policy in place. Google warns that gaining access to a dead user\u2019s email account is a lengthy process even for a verified family member or legal representative.<\/p>\n You will need to provide a copy of your identity document, the deceased\u2019s death certificate and the header and entire contents of any email you received from the deceased\u2019s account to prove you knew them or were in contact with them. That is not all: as with Yahoo, you will need to submit a court order to access the account.<\/p>\n Web kids<\/strong><\/p>\n South Africa has no existing legislation that provides clarity on digital death, but lawmakers in the United States are working on theirs. According to tech authority mashable.com, only five states \u2014 Oklahoma, Idaho, Rhode Island, Indiana and Connecticut \u2014 have laws governing digital property management after death, but they need to be updated to cover social media, electronic payments and online banking. The uniform law commission is also considering legislation for fiduciary access (trusting another party with powers) to digital property and assets.<\/p>\n These may not be worth much, but as we increasingly share and store our lives online they are accruing enormous sentimental value. I, for one, would choose my blog over my jewellery box any day, but there is more to it than that. You see, I am one of them: the \u201cweb kids<\/a>\u201d \u2014 as Polish writer Piotr Czerski calls us \u2014 who \u201cgrew up with the internet and on the internet … the internet to us is not something external to reality but a part of it: an invisible yet constantly present layer intertwined with the physical environment. We do not use the internet, we live on the internet and along it.\u201d<\/p>\n Preparing for a digital afterlife is not just practical, it is necessary. I do not know when or how I am going to die, but I know I do not want my last status update to be: \u201cEating muesli. So yum.\u201d Do you?<\/p>\n Things to do before D-day<\/strong><\/p>\n Source: Mail & Guardian<\/a><\/p>\n Related articles<\/strong><\/p>\n Microsoft revamps Bing, Facebook helps<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n