Why you, your company need to think about digital death

Posted by Justin Goldsborough | 10 comments

What happens when we die? It’s one of the oldest, and most debated, questions in the book. Which is why it seems just a tad bit ironic that as prevalent as the Internet has been for the last 15-plus years, people are just now starting to talk about another death-related question — What happens to our digital identity when we die?

As communicators, we all feel comfortable with analogies. So try this one on for size. Crisis plan is to a living will as updated crisis plan including digital/social media is to deciding what happens to our digital information before we die.

Research the topic of digital death for a while and you’ll find one overarching theme — there is no standard rule on how to handle it. Not for people or for companies. If you were planning to launch a startup, digital death would be a good area to explore.

In fact, going forward, that may end up being one of the biggest questions we have to answer. Who’s responsible for deciding what happens to a person’s digital data when he/she passes away? Is it the person? Or the company whose sites/apps they used? The answer is clear as mud. But it’s likely to be both.

Why is digital death a concern?

I used to work for telecom company. While there, I remember hearing a story about a customer who passed away. The company followed its standard process and eventually deleted the person’s account. A few days after, the customer’s mom called up begging and pleading for the company to help her get her son’s voicemail recording back because it was the only way she could still hear his voice.

Online or offline, people need to grieve when someone dies. It’s how they remember. It’s how they cope. And yesterday’s vociemail greeting could easily be today’s Facebook message, chat transcript or blog comment. Managing this online information when someone passes away has serious implications for both the person who dies and the brand that controls the platform where the user’s information resides.

• Person: Think will, executor and power of attorney here. If you die and haven’t made arrangements for how your digital records should be handled, you leave your loved ones to have to deal with the companies who manage the sites where your online conversations reside. Their policies aren’t uniform and it can be a tough process to have to wade through at a time when you’re trying to grieve. Plus, you lose the right to determine who gets access to what part of your online identity or to hide any digital skeletons in your closet.
• Company: You don’t want your brand or clients to be in the situation my former employer was in with the deleted voicemail greeting. As you’ll see later when we discuss how some of the major e-mail platforms are handling digital death, mismanaging this type of delicate situation can lead to litigation and negative PR. The companies’ responsibilities are vague when it comes to issue, and many don’t have any type of policy to address it. But the fact is, if you are a brand that has any type of online platform people use where they submit information, eventually those users will die. And there is a good possibility some of those users friends or family will want access to the information they shared on your digital assets.

How do companies handle digital death today?

Some of the most prominent players in the social network and e-mail space provide examples of how digital death is being handled in the early stages of the conversation (thanks for the assist, thedigitalbeyond.com). It is important to note that currently, the majority of companies don’t address the digital death issue in their privacy policies or terms of service, thus leaving themselves open to potentially sticky situations down the road.

• Facebook allows your heirs to determine if your account should be deleted or memorialized. Facebook requires a death certificate or an article that confirms a person’s death to memorialize their account. A memorialized account no longer shows up in Facebook search, but is still available to confirmed friends, who can post memories on the person’s wall. Facebook also offers a download your information link that lets you download a copy of photos, videos, wall posts, messages, friends lists and other content.
• Twitter will remove a dead user’s account and help compile an archive of his/her public tweets.
• GMail will give you access to a deceased user’s account if you provide a death certificate, proof you’ve received e-mail from the account and proof you have legal authority over the estate. Interesting that Gmail is actually referring to the person’s offline wishes about the estate to effect what happens with the account.
• YouTube will let you access the account of a user who has passed away if you provide the account name, a death certificate and proof of power of attorney over the YouTube account.
• Yahoo! takes a different stance on death and actually deletes the account of a user once the company finds out the person has died. The e-mail provider has been taken to task for this stance, including in Thomas Friedman’s book The World is Flat, where Friedman chronicles the story of a father whose 20-year-old son died serving overseas. Yahoo! refused to turn the son’s e-mail account over to the father, so he took the company to court and won access to his son’s e-mails.

Additional resources

If you find this topic as intriguing as I did, here are some additional resources for you to consider:

• You’re dead, your data isn’t: What happens now? (SXSW panel)
• 7 resources for handling digital life after death (Mashable)
• Digital Death and Digital Afterlife: Serious Business (Forbes)
• Entrustet (Allows people to pass on digital assets to 10 designated heirs through one executor)
• Legacy Locker (Lets user pass on account information and legacy goodbye note after he/she dies)

Is digital death even on your company’s/clients’ radar? Have you prepared for your digital death? How do you think companies should manage this issue — are you a fan of the Facebook or Yahoo! way?