![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/The-Conversation.jpg?resize=184%2C19&ssl=1\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/Facebook2.jpg?resize=488%2C275&ssl=1\")
<\/p>\n
What will happen to your Facebook account when you die? What about all your photos shared on social media, your texts with loved ones, or documents on cloud-storage systems? In just the two-year period from 2012 to 2014, humans\u00a0produced more data than in all of human civilization\u00a0before that \u2013 and the pace is only accelerating.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not clear what people\u2019s digital presences will look like in years to come, but it\u2019s sure that an increasing number of people will be creating and accumulating growing reams of data until the day they die. But then what?<\/p>\n
The law is very clear about handling paper documents and other physical property when someone dies. But as a law professor at Drake Law School who has been studying property transfers for years, I\u2019ve seen that laws, regulations and court rulings are only recently trying to figure out how to handle\u00a0the ever-changing realm of digital technology. So far, in most cases the information is controlled by the companies that store it \u2013 regardless of what users want or direct to happen after their death.<\/p>\n
Law catching up with technology<\/strong><\/p>\n Many people have had email and other digital accounts for decades, some stretching back to the early pioneers in the 1960s. But large numbers of average people really only began creating significant digital footprints in the early part of the 21st century.\u00a0Facebook\u00a0and\u00a0Gmail began operations in 2004;\u00a0YouTube started in 2005;\u00a0Twitter launched in 2006; the\u00a0iPhone came out in 2007.<\/p>\n Almost a decade later, a group of lawyers from around the country\u00a0developed a draft uniform law\u00a0they encouraged all 50 states to adopt, which would allow people to specify in their wills that the executor of their estate can access their email and social media profiles. So far, 39 state legislatures have adopted it and seven more are considering it this year.<\/p>\n The uniform law doesn\u2019t specify \u2013 and courts have not yet been asked to rule on \u2013 exactly how that access should happen. So for the moment, a dead person\u2019s executor must contact the company behind each digital platform to determine how to get into the person\u2019s accounts.<\/p>\n In\u00a0states that haven\u2019t passed this law, companies themselves can decide whether to allow loved ones access to a late relative\u2019s digital assets.\u00a0Yahoo, for example, is notorious for terminating an account upon a user\u2019s death and forbidding access afterward.<\/p>\n The company\u2019s refusal to grant access to surviving family members is being challenged in Massachusetts, a state that has not adopted the uniform digital assets law. In October 2017, the\u00a0Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court\u00a0ruled that an executor could consent to the disclosure of emails on behalf of the dead person whose estate was being managed. The case is back before a lower court to decide on other issues, including whether the estate will be able to access the account despite\u00a0Yahoo\u2019s terms of service agreement.<\/p>\n The role of privacy<\/strong><\/p>\n With so many legal issues yet to be decided, people should be sure they include digital assets in their estate planning and encourage their loved ones to do the same.<\/p>\n Access to the email of a person who has died may be the most important to unlock: Messages and images are likely to be emotionally important. In addition, banking, utilities and other accounts are often linked to an email address; gaining online access to those can help administer a person\u2019s estate.<\/p>\n Of course, it\u2019s important to\u00a0protect the privacy of a person who has died\u2013 despite the general legal assumption that a dead person no longer has privacy that needs protecting. The uniform state law does this by requiring a person to have left specific written permission for an executor to access an email account.<\/p>\n Making plans for yourself<\/strong><\/p>\n To prepare yourself for a digital afterlife, the first task is to state, in writing, what you want to happen to your digital assets. Create a list of the accounts in your name, and determine which ones you want your executor to access \u2013 and which should be deleted.<\/p>\n Crucially, do not list usernames or passwords in your will, because a person\u2019s will becomes a public document upon their death. Instead, consider recording access information for these accounts in a safe place \u2013 like\u00a0password management software\u00a0\u2013 and leave instructions for your executor to find them.<\/p>\n It\u2019s not yet clear whether credits and purchases with digital media accounts (like the Google Play Store or iTunes) or online reward account points can be transferred when their holder dies. The only solution for now may be to leave your executor with instructions on how to access the value stored in those accounts \u2013 and back up the media on external hard drives stored in a safe place.<\/p>\n Finally, check with the companies whose online services you use to see if they provide their own method to transfer assets at death. For example,\u00a0Google has pioneered a method\u00a0for its users to indicate what they want to have happen to their account if they don\u2019t access it for several months.<\/p>\n By engaging in some simple estate planning, you can protect your privacy as well as ease the management of your estate after your death. Plan for your digital assets in the same way you would any other valuable tangible or intangible asset. After all, digital assets are today\u2019s shoeboxes of photos, letters and other mementos. Planning can preserve your legacy in its digital form.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Natalie Banta<\/span> What will happen to your Facebook account when you die? What about all your photos shared on social media, your texts with loved ones, or documents on cloud-storage systems? In just the two-year period from 2012 to 2014, humans\u00a0produced more data than in all of human civilization\u00a0before that \u2013 and the pace is only […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":139,"featured_media":11848,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8348],"tags":[8354,2914,8353,8359,8357,8352,8351,8355,8356,8358,8350],"class_list":["post-11846","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-conversation","tag-data-privacy","tag-death","tag-digital-music","tag-digital-photos","tag-digital-text","tag-digital-wallet","tag-email","tag-internet-culture","tag-internet-use","tag-online-safety","tag-privacy"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/Facebook2.jpg?fit=1200%2C675&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8QzSF-354","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11846","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/139"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11846"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11846\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11848"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11846"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11846"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11846"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nAssociate Professor of Law, Drake University<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"