Digital Afterlife: Where There’s A Digital Will, There’s A Way

You are an avid Gmailer, Facebooker, Twitter user, share photos on Flickr and remain active on the Internet through the day. You live more inside the cobbled walls of the Internet than in the physical world outside. And your bank passbooks are an open secret.

However, your passwords to various Internet accounts are a well-maintained secret. Well, that is how they have to be. The Internet gives you that secret, dark and highly private space to be yourself. Unless, of course, you belong to a generation that has less privilege to store and protect data. Now you store numerous passwords in your brain and your passwords securely seal the ‘you’ within yourself.

But what happens when you are critically ill and or when you cease to exist? The physical world has a way dealing with the dead when you breathe your last and your heart stops beating. The members of your family will get a death certificate and the last rites will be duly observed. But how does the faceless, voiceless, sense-less digital world treat you after you are gone? What’s more, does it matter to anyone?

There was a time when social sites had no policies in place and the dead used to lie dormant in the cyber world. A horror writer had even written a two-line story. “Soon as he returned from his friend’s funeral, he opened the Facebook account to see how many were grieving the death of this beautiful person. The first message was from the dead person who smiled at his face from the screen, asking, “Hola! Party tonight?” That’s spookiness exemplified.

Most of us live our life inside and outside the virtual world. But when we come to our journey’s end here on this planet, it does not necessarily mean the end of the metadata-driven life we lead in the virtual world. Of late, a lot of cyber companies are debating on what should be the most effective way of dealing with ‘death’ in the cyber world.

Well, some of the data out there in the cyberspace would hardly be important. For instance, the status updates, jokes shared and mail forwards won’t have much value after a person is dead. But what about those bank transactions, income tax details, pay slips, paid online courses, credit card transactions or frequent flier miles? They surely will be useful for the rest of the family. There is even more serious stuff like virtual agreements on various business transactions, which are often maintained by company heads and businessmen.

What the world would have dismissed as a figment of imagination is a reality today. In the modern world that is wired-yet-wireless, the word ‘digital will’ is staring us in the face.

Although not everyone makes a digital will, a transfer of the power of attorney might be required for getting hold of all ‘digital properties’ of the deceased, including online accounts. In fact, a company called Cyberlaw Asia has been talking about digital wills in more tangible terms and has been a strong advocate of the policy framework that supports this concept.

Simply put, a digital will is the same as a legal will that bequeaths the legal heir everything the deceased held and wanted to transfer to his/her loved ones. A ‘digital will’ will more or less do the same job, with virtual possessions being treated in the same way as physical assets.

For starters, here is how it works. Social networking sites such as Facebook will follow a family member’s choice and will either maintain the profile as it is or turn it into a memorial site, upon receiving adequate documents such as a death certificate and the power of attorney being transferred to the same person in the physical sense.

Flickr will most certainly not allow friends or relatives to check on the ‘private’ pictures posted by the deceased. Public sharing of pictures will remain as they are.

For more serious stuff such as bank accounts and income tax, the company will function in the same way as it is done in the physical world. That kind of data would be transferred to the legal heir when a death certificate is sent to the authorities, with a plea that the same should be sent to specified e-mail addresses.

After receiving the death certificate and the proof of power of attorney, e-mail service providers like Hotmail and Gmail will provide the heir with copies of all the communication the deceased had through that account. In addition, they may also require an e-mail by the person concerned to the heir, vesting the powers to receive such a copy upon his/her death.

However, such things are not consistently followed by cyber companies. For instance, Yahoo shuts down an inactive account that has been remaining dormant for four months. Can we really have uniform digital practices to bury our dead in the virtual world? Prayers don’t work everywhere in the cyber world but we surely hope it will become a reality soon.