Settling the digital deceased estate.

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http://www.smh.com.au/national/settling ... -a2wj.html


Settling the digital deceased estate

* Claudine Beaumont
* April 11, 2009

IN THE days before technology, death was a relatively simple affair: the physical belongings of the deceased could be divided among friends and family to act as a permanent reminder of a life.

In the digital age, things are not so easy. As well as the physical belongings, there is an entire cyber existence to take care of - documents, Facebook profiles, Twitter accounts. Such sites are littered with profiles of dead people. Here are their last photos, thoughts and messages. What happens to these when someone dies?

Entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley may have found a solution. This week, a site called Legacy Locker was launched in the United States. It not only provides a storage space for wills, farewell letters and other documents but a master list of user names and programs for online bank accounts, networking sites and document repositories.

Subscribers to the service create a list of their online profiles and passwords and nominate a "beneficiary" to receive this information upon their death.

It means that their Facebook profile, email address or Twitter account can be disabled after they die, and that nominated relatives can assume ownership of their digital ephemera.

"We see Legacy Locker filling a serious unmet need in the modern, digital lifestyle," says Jeremy Toeman, the site's founder. "It's not fun to think about, but the reality is that most web-based companies have no provision for managing your account in the event of your passing."

Mr Toeman says that Legacy Locker itself will live on even in the event of its own demise.

Legacy Locker is not the only net start-up to identify a gap in the market. Other similar services already exist, such as KeepYouSafe and Deathswitch.

Graham Jones, an internet psychologist, says that since the advent of photography and home movies, we have grown used to loved ones "living on" after death, but that our cyber existence poses some new issues. "It would be very unsettling for loved ones to continue receiving tweets or messages to those accounts as if the person were still alive."

Telegraph, London

Sounds like a good solution to a problem, while I am healthy and well I have been considering over the past year or so the act of writing my will.

One of the things I intend to include in my will is a list of organisations which I have accounts with, and a request for my executor to write to each one to close down my accounts. I also intend to leave a CD-ROM in my safe for my executor with details of any on-line accounts which I hold, with contact details of the people who run the site, username and password and any content I want displayed on my user page after my departure to the other side.

I would be interested to know if WP has consider what should we do in 30 or 40 years when many of the current generation of people here (who will be old timers) start to leave this mortal existence. I think it would be best if we work out a plan and a policy now while we are still young. I am hopeful that WP will be a very long lived institution, as a result it will have the problem of members dying in large numbers at some point in the future.

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Health is a state of physical, mental and social wellbeing and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity I am not a jigsaw, I am a free man !

Diagnosed under the DSM5 rules with autism spectrum disorder, under DSM4 psychologist said would have been AS (299.80) but I suspect that I am somewhere between 299.80 and 299.00 (Autism) under DSM4.

yeah, my parents kept their bank account and other details in a folder in their desk, but they had children (me and my siblings) to tidy up their affairs, also they weren't internet users.

I have no children so I'll be using the public executor. I suppose I should supply them with a list, but I haven't made one yet.

An online list is ok for a lot of things but I don't know about bank account/asset details, that would become a target for thieves surely?