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Virtual legacies: Your digital remains
Posted Oct 21, 2009
Ghoulish as it may sounds – with Halloween approaching it is at least the 'correct' season to discuss one’s morbid fears. If you’ve ever been at home sick and have had to give the name of your computer password to a colleague – you’ll appreciate passwords are personal (I once had to spell out the name of an ex-lover to my boss).
According to a recent article in the New York Times entitled, 'The Digital Afterlife' – to be on-top or online of these new forms of virtual heritage – the correct thing to do, “is to appoint someone as your digital executor who is responsible for cleaning up your accounts, clearing your browser cache, deleting secret e-mails and trashing appropriate files.”
Services we were completely shocked to discover actually exist include Legacy Locker, AssetLock and Deathswitch who deal in digital remains. Legacy Locker works as, "a safe, secure repository for your vital digital property that lets you grant access to online assets for friends and loved ones in the event of loss, death, or disability." Whilst the ominously sounding DeathSwitch (?!) is an automated service, that prompts you on a regular schedule to, “make sure you’re still alive.”
According to DeathSwitch's site, if there is no-reply (can you still holiday in a non-WIFI zone e wonder?), “the computer deduces you are dead or critically disabled and your pre-scripted messages are emailed to those named by you.”
Users have apparently signed up the service to pass on the obvious computer passwords, bank details and final wishes and the less (scarier sounding) reasons – for “the last say in an argument, funeral arrangements and unspeakable secrets.”
With the risk however of these companies not lasting as long as yourself (and with site taglines of ‘bridging mortality’ we have our doubts), perhaps the more sensible solution would be that outlined in the former mentioned NY Time’s article
“Keep an inventory of all your log-ins and passwords for all your accounts...Be sure to specify what you would like to be done with your digital legacy. Do you want your accounts closed? Status changed? Avatars removed? If you have a blog or Web site and you want it to live on after you’ve passed, you should make financial arrangements to pay for hosting..." Ms. McAlear said to the New York Times.
Kerry Olsen
Source: New York Times
Photo Credit: Various
TAGS: digital afterlife new york times deathswitch legacylocker assetlock halloween passwords onlien security online magazine
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