Your Digital Afterlife

Have you ever wondered what happens to your online presence when you’re no longer a part of this earth? As I’ve mentioned before, I’m a RN in the ICU at Freeman, and though we’d love to be able to send all of our patients out the front door of the hospital whole and hearty, sadly it isn’t always possible. The other night while working I started to wonder what happens to things such as your email accounts, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, eBay and all those other lovely ways we interact with others online? Unless you’ve included passwords and your wishes in your will or other document, is there anyone to shut them down? Or do you want them left active? So many questions. So as we all do in this digital age I typed “what happens to your online presence when you die” into my favorite (of the moment) search engine Google. As we all have come to expect I got pages and pages of results.

One cool way to deal with your email accounts is to set up a Dead Man’s Switch. This is an online service that you check into periodically and if you don’t it sends you emails asking you to verify you are still living. If you don’t respond it will send messages you have securely loaded into their servers to predestinated individuals 60 days after your last check in. This is a pretty cool service in my opinion. This way you can say things you wish you’d said, or even give directions on how to deal with all of your accounts. This is a pretty neat service overall, in my opinion.  Another advantage of setting up a switch is to avoid the misery this family is going through.  The author Clare Jacobson’s boyfriend’s mother passed away without leaving anyone information on how to access/close her email account and they now receive constant spam messages from her. That is a pretty creepy thing and I think wouldn’t do anything good for the grieving process. Of course there is the flip side of that where emails are received that seem to actually be messages from beyond the grave that reference things that only the deceased would know and even events that have occurred after their death. I found a recent example of this occurring in this article about Jack Froese whose friends have been receiving seemingly pertinent messages from him since after his death from a cardiac dysrhythmia. They refer private conversations in attics and an ankle injury that occurred after he passed away.

Another concern is what happens to Facebook after you pass? Of course Facebook has a few options available, your profile can be memorialized, where sensitive information is removed and only the friends you had when you passed away can view your profile. Or the profile can be deleted entirely; these options are both available via a form in the help section. The third and newest option is that with proper documentation such as a court order your entire profile can be downloaded.

I can see this post going on forever if I let it, so I’ll wrap up with saying that another site I found TheDigital Beyond has a bunch of really cool articles on it, I saw ones about people being buried with their cell phones & spouses and such receiving messages they believed to be from them after burial (creepy!) or family members calling and leaving voicemails on these phones. (yes the family/spouse is continuing to pay the bill and continue the service. There are also articles on how to deal with your digital presence after death and lots of other information. Happy reading!