Practical guidance for managing digital estates & memories
Gaining access to an individual’s online accounts (social networking, email) after they die is often impossible, although in some cases, next of kin have fought for access via the courts. As the podcast demonstrates, they do not always win.
Here are five recommendations from the podcast to avoid your digital life from being locked up online.
For personal online services such as for banking and financial, registrations to social media accounts such as Facebook and LinkedIn or other entertainment/lifestyle memberships where digital assets may be stored (i.e. your Apple account with iPhoto or iCloud), always use a personal email address for the sign-up process as opposed to a company email address or someone else’s contact details.
It’s a practical and basic rule but it means that you keep control over the sign in process as well as management of the account and the data it contains.
Why?
If a person leaves a place of employment and their work email is associated with their online services, they may have access issues later.
When someone leaves a company suddenly (i.e. in the case of redundancy), it’s likely that the business will cancel the email address if not immediately, then very quickly for security reasons.
In the event that an employee is working through a notice period before leaving the company, there’s still a chance that updating social media and online registration details with a personal email address may be forgotten with the distraction of other handover tasks.
This generally means that when that person leaves the company, they won’t have access to the email account for any correspondence from online subscription services but more importantly, they are unable to reset usernames and passwords for online services that rely on email, as well as a response to the emails they send, to identify an account holder.
Next of kin will have issues accessing a deceased person’s accounts if they are associated with a work email address.
Even the most sympathetic companies will not (or in any event are extremely unlikely) to allow next of kin to access the deceased’s email account for privacy and security reasons.
Whether or not next of kin or close family and/or friends have access to the deceased’s usernames and passwords, if the accounts they are trying to enter are associated with a work email, they still won’t be able to access those services that rely on email and responses from the account holder’s email to confirm access rights.
Using an online service set up with another person’s details can lead to access issues and complications down the line.
Say a couple shares a household service which has only been set up in one person’s name. Should the person that registered for the subscription die, their partner may no longer be able to access the account. This is for the reason cited before — that digital services often verify access rights through email — but similarly, functions that we often take for granted these days such as ‘remember this password’ on devices means that the person who survived the deceased may not know relevant passwords either.
For shared household services, it’s wise to set these up using an email account that everyone within the household can access and document relevant passwords so that if the person who registered the account(s) leaves, it does not automatically result in discontinuation of the service.
It’s also worth bearing in mind that when someone registers for an online account, they are the one to accept terms and conditions as well as responsibility for it — including associated fees — even if the service is predominantly used by someone else.
As an example, if a son or daughter bought a mobile phone account or online media subscription for a parent but signed up for it under their own name, they would be liable for ongoing payments in the event their parent died during the fixed term contract period.
Think forward 100 years in time. How would you like to be remembered by your family of the future? What is the lasting legacy that you want to leave behind within your communities? Are there memories you’d like to pass on as a record of how you lived and what you experienced? Traditions you’d like to share?
For some people, the value of legacy is sharing words of wisdom from experiences they’ve gained through the course of their life. One reader recently wrote to me about how he is digitising photos and correspondence that he’d received from his parents following the death of his father.
“Death erases people,” he told me. “I don’t want my Dad to be erased. There are lessons that he taught me that I want to pass on to my children for them to pass on in turn to theirs if they choose. A good start is having those recorded somewhere.”
The reality is much of our correspondence and memories — including photos –are tied up in email, social channels and across myriad online accounts. According to a recent survey, three quarters of Brits believe that physical letters and notes are the most heartfelt way to communicate but the reality is that we mostly communicate online these days, our histories now often guarded behind walls that we have to sign up to and into. And these digital assets are subject to different legal ownership rules that often digress from the laws we apply to dealing with our physical property.
Over the next few weeks, Away For A Bit will post a series of 50 Legacy Tips, short features that will provide practical guidance on how to archive and preserve your important online memories and history for future generations and for yourself so that these are not lost to the fast paced changes of the digital service industry. If you have any questions or suggestions for the series, drop a line to emily@awayforabit.com.
Watch this ABC report which explores the digital afterlife, offering an initial look at emotional, practical and legal aspects to consider when managing an online estate.
“…it’s very important to be considering things like digital wills, which might be an extension of what you’re doing already if you’re managing your estate and speaking to a legal advisor. It also means that the next of kin and your friends and family, who might be in a state of shock, have some sense of what you might want done with that information.” Emily Baxter from Away For A Bit
Away For A Bit 