Facebook has recently rolled out some new features for users
who wish for something to be done with their accounts in the event of their
death. Users could already request that a profile of a deceased person be
memorialized. One of the new settings gives users the option of having their account
completely removed after death. Another allows a user to specify certain other
users who will be given the ability to manage various aspects of their profile
if they were to die. Google introduced similar settings for their social media
sites a few years ago. Personally, I would prefer my various online accounts to
be deleted, but I don’t have a logical reason backing up that preference.
This announcement made me ask the question: what should
happen to our online lives after we die? This does not pertain to just social
media sites, but instead to any account we have online. Many of us may have
pictures, records, or other data, hosted online and protected by passwords,
which we would want to share in the event of our deaths. How would family
members of a recently deceased person go about getting this data? In many
cases, there would be nothing they could do if they were not left a password,
which would likely be the case in the event of an unexpected death.
Numerous services for dealing with such issues exist. For
many, you simply specify email addresses which, upon your death, will be sent a
message written by you. So this can be used to send family members your various
usernames and passwords, or really anything else you would want them to know.
How do these services know if you’ve died? Most of them rely
on your responding to emails to ensure that you’re still alive. One example of
such a service is Deathswitch (www.deathswitch.com),
which functions in a similar manner to what was described above.
Some services allow your accounts to remain active. LivesOn evaluates
your Twitter feed, and using your account, will continue tweeting after your
death, attempting to emulate your interests and style of writing. I’m not sure
why someone would want their account to keep tweeting after their death, but
now the option exists.
These are just two example of the many sites that exist to
deal with this sort of thing. On the whole, I don’t think much of it is very
useful. The idea of something like Deathswitch is good, but I think most people
won’t be bothered to sign up for it, even though leaving sensitive information could
be rather important.
Sorry for such a depressing post!
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