Ask Slashdot: What Should Happen To Your Data After You Die? 122
Nerval's Lobster writes "Death is Nature's way of telling you it's time to get off the Internet. But when you finally shuffle off this mortal coil, you leave something behind: all your email and other digital assets. That's a huge problem not only for the deceased — once you're on the wrong side of the Great Beyond, there's no way to delete those incriminating messages — but also any relatives who might want to access your (former) life. And it's a problem Google's seeking to solve with the new Inactive Account Manager. (In an April 11 blog posting, Google product manager Andreas Tuerk suggested that Inactive Account Manager wasn't a 'great name' for the product, but maybe the company shouldn't be so hard on itself: it's a way better name than, say, Google Death Dashboard.) Inactive Account Manager will delete your Google-related data (Gmail, etc.) after a set amount of time, or else send that data to 'trusted contacts' you set up before your untimely demise. Which raises an interesting, semi-Google-related question: What do you want to have happen to your data after you die? Give it to loved ones, or have an automated system nuke it all? Should more companies that host email and data offer plans like Inactive Account Manager?"
Where's the... (Score:5, Interesting)
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I call bullshit. Now you have to opt-out of Google's spying every time your account is deleted.
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Just leave a trail of baffling BS. It's the least you can do for your legacy. Maybe you'll end up with a cult following, like L. Ron.
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What the fuck do you think I've been doing for the last 15 years on Slashdot?! :D
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Then leave somewhere some hidden caches with statements your cult following are all wackos, nuts, loonies, etc. hidden all over the place, along with a signature and photo of you doing something contrary to their beliefs.
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I believe it's standard policy for IT to re-visit then re-invent the wheel every so often. At that point, what's been done historically regardless of how successful or unsuccessful it is doesn't matter. And learning from competitors is way below google's pay grade!
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photo of you doing something contrary to their beliefs
i think he may have been referring to http://www.goatse.info/hello.jpg [goatse.info]
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I call bullshit. Now you have to opt-out of Google's spying every time your account is deleted.
How many times are you planning to die, Mr. Bond?
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After I am dead this meta-data is of no use for me... My heirs can figure it out...
Why not do what millions of others have done? Nothing.
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Why not do what millions of others have done? Nothing.
I suppose for AC's, this is a particularly attractive option.
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I don't care, I'm self centered and dead option?
When you are gone you cease to be self-centered, you are dead-centered. A target! Ripe for bruteforced attacks on your history! Just a matter of time before some character in North Korea and completely re-done your entire browsing and interweb content history as a life-long supporter of Dear Leader Fatty-fattington.
Best buy some After-life Insurance or something.
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the "i'm self centered and dead" option would be to require cramming all google servers into your coffin with you for burial so that you'll have ready access to plenty of porn in the afterlife
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You can show them goatse in your will. That is a form of data, and they will genuinely grieve after seeing it.
Oh they'll be grieving (Score:2)
I also have no will. I want everybody to genuinely be grieving.
Once the legal battles and government intervention grabs much of your assets, they'll be grieving plenty.
Having no will is what lawyers would term a "Dick Move".
If you really were there would be no question (Score:2)
I don't care, I'm self centered and dead option?
If you were REALLY self centered, then obviously you'd want many people to be able to read your brilliant thoughts long after you are gone.
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Nuke it all (Score:3)
It will be like you never existed
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Re:Nuke it all (Score:5, Funny)
It will be like you never existed
Is it possible to be low-level formatted after you are gone?
"How'd he die?" "Head crashed." "Oh, ow."
Re:Nuke it all (Score:5, Funny)
Is it possible to be low-level formatted after you are gone?
Yes. It's called composting.
Re:Nuke it all, even the static (Score:1)
The Tibetans cut up their loved one's remains and fed left them out for the vultures. Not unlike what will happen in the state and corporate databases that will outlive us all.
In the digital age you will never die, your data will just age out. The IRS, then the census bureau will be the first to back up what little of you was relevant to their raison d' etre. Your remaining relevance will fade with changing social fads to which your personal data was related. Your bank account will cease activity. The othe
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there should be a +6 funny for this one :-D
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obligatory xkcd: http://xkcd.com/686/ [xkcd.com]
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i clicked the link and then clicked random and got this one... http://xkcd.com/26/ [xkcd.com]
is it wrong that i thought it was one of the funniest things i think i've ever seen on the internets?
Hilarious scenarios for Friday (Score:5, Insightful)
1. Husband dies, google releases data, wife finds out husband spent all excess cash on cam whores.
2. Google deletes husband's data, treasure map / account numbers are lost.
3. Husband makes another unrelated gmail account, a set time later, wife is notified husband is dead while eating dinner with him.
Google just can't win here can they? :)
Re:Hilarious scenarios for Friday (Score:4, Funny)
4. Kid gets grounded from the computer, mom receives all his porn.
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3. Husband makes another unrelated gmail account, a set time later, wife is notified husband is dead while eating dinner with him.
If the wife is checking her google mail during the family diner, she has it coming!
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Damn smartphones.
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Husband makes another unrelated gmail account, a set time later, wife is notified husband is dead while eating dinner with him.
I have of course not read TFA, but you'd hope they did sensible things like send out warnings in advance.
Probably something like
Dear Mr./Mrs. X. This email has been automatically sent out because [explanation of inactive account system]. We hope this is all some silly mistake and that Y is doing fine. If we do not detect further activity on Y's account within 10 days, [stuff will happen]. Y can prevent this by [various ways to notify Google of non-deadness].
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Nerval's lobster (Score:2)
Doesn't matter (Score:5, Funny)
Depends on the Data (Score:3)
Emails, banking stuff, and all that would go to the appropriate family members.
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except for code that isn't mine to relicense as GPL
I'd just open it all up, with appropriate disclaimers, just because of the fact that the information ought to be free, and you cannot sue a corpse
Re:Depends on the Data (Score:4, Insightful)
That's the way, I think, except for those who flat out don't care. I've given a few people, the same that I've named and filed with my advanced directive, an envelope with master password to 'The Vault' so that they can unload what they please and close the accounts. Still have to write a will and have it notarized.
It's not so much that I care a lot about digital stuff vanishing into mass storage somewhere but I don't want to leave the people I care about with possibly vexing dangling digital details.
Computer goes to a friend anyway, so no worries about anything embarrassing on the drives; my home folder will be available to family and friends - family pics, favorite comics, possibly useful links and documents and some stray writing. They don't want it, erase it.
I'm not sure I'm entirely comfortable with Google's approach to a dead man switch, but it's a helluva good start; it's a nice thing to do and it could help keep things smooth for them as well.
But I'd suggest doing the bulk of arrangements in meat space. Do it now: we don't know our time, so it doesn't hurt to not leave as much of a mess behind as doing nothing. Folks above are right, tho - when I'm gone I'm likely not going to care anymore. Dead is probably just that. If there is anything after, whatever one's beliefs, you won't find out until it happens.
Buried with it (Score:2)
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you might just be making a case for later warrant to have your corpse and data exhumed. save your family the trauma, torch your shit
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Plus in the future, in the case that reanimation is made possible I can have my stuff again
“Good morning sir, and welcome to the future. Technology has advanced to the point where we can revive a corpse that was embalmed and stuffed in a box for centuries. Unfortunately, it seems that we can't read the Office 2083 files that all your data are stored in, so we're just going to have to kill and re-bury you now in hope of future research advances.”
Here's my plan (no stealing it!!) (Score:2)
Remember how everyone is supposed to have their 15 minutes of fame, like Andy said?
So my figuring is this - there are more celebs and notable people than ever before, thanks in part to the web.
Therefore the gross overall amount of fame has increased, while time has remained constant, so people will have less than 15 minutes of fame. Gotta be down to about 10 minutes, or less by now. Right?
So my plan is to go about making everyone else famous. The more fame and notoriety of ordinary clods applies downward
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But, time could be infinite, or near to it. Who says you have to be famous while you are alive? Perhaps some random bit of data or code you have now will be found by archeologists in the far future, and it will solve some massive problem saving their civilization. Heck, look at some of the famous authors, artists, composers, etc. thru time, where their bio ends with "... succumbed to the ravages of syphilis and died a homeless pauper in the winter of ..." or whatever.
Nuke my bookmarks (Score:2)
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http://hardforum.com/showpost.php?p=1039789445&postcount=4 [hardforum.com] ;)
Could the question be any less specific? (Score:2)
"What Should happen to your data after you die?" is a question so vague as to be vacuuous.
Fairly obviously, just like any other flavor of cruft you accumulate during your time as a successful combatant against entropy, different flavors of data are best disposed of in different ways. We've only had more-or-less-all-of-recorded-human-civilization to work on this problem...
The new issue on the plate isn't so much 'OMG! 'Data' is a mysterious and fundamentally novel category!!!' but "Shit, huge swaths of 'my d
Graveyard shift (Score:2)
There should be a giant online cemetery where a person's online presence can retire when the body withers. Oh, wait... we already have one and it's called the Wayback Machine. Maybe there just needs to be more explicit cooperation with it about things like forum user profiles and social networking accounts? And maybe better funding?
Let them decide (Score:2)
Let your family decide what they want to do with your data. Write down all of your passwords (if you're like me, you've got about a dozen) along with your usual accounts on a piece of paper and put them in a safety deposit box. When you pass and they go through your deposit box, they'll come across your credentials and decide what they'd like to do with your digital data. Some people would like to read it, others would prefer not to.
This strategy has an added bonus; if they ever come across a site that
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How do you handle the must change password ever x days/months stuff? I have a spreadsheet with 100+ logins, no way that work in a safe deposit box easily.
By including the master password in the box, with the instructions for using it to unlock the digital keychain. Besides, you need backups anyways
Just a automatic cleanup program (Score:2)
Your spouse (Score:4, Insightful)
Or its a sneaky way of Google finding the email address of the person your trust the most?
Probably your spouse.
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Just put passw0rds in your will (Score:2)
I was sorting out a will recently and even my non-clued up solicitor (US=lawyer) recommended putting passwords in my sealed will. Apparently, this is a standard recommendation from the law society for every will written in the UK.
Without a doubt, every other country on planet Earth must have it's lawyers recommend something similar.
What is the story here?
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OK
"Provide access to your computer passwords"......
I don't remember my solicitors exact words offhand, but his point was, give the location of your passwords in your will.
Granted though..... some lawyers could use this an a money making opportunity!
Trust the law society to give skewed advice
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The problem with that is your passwords (hopefully) change occasionally which means you have to pester the lawyer / solicitor / brother / turtle (they live a long time) constantly and what's worse, you have to remember to tell them. A better method is a password safe like 1Password or KeePass. Then you only have one password to change. Furthermore, with at least 1Password, you have an encrypted file of lots of other useful legal bits, your SSN, bank account numbers, etc. Of course, that makes for one st
Rickroll (Score:2)
If I'm old and wrinkly but don't lose my (admittedly odd) sense of humor, I'd be tempted to rick-roll my family.
As a final farewall, he's a few pictures of my wrinkly butt. The code to the account with your inheritance is hidden somewhere in there...
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It is common knowledge (Score:3)
St Peter asks your for all social media passwords.
I, for one, would want to make sure those accounts no longer exist.
Apropos (Score:5, Interesting)
I have stave IV lung cancer, and maybe a few weeks left to go. Since I was an only child, both of my parents are gone, and I never married or had children, I basically have nobody who would want to have my data.
So, I am basically just erasing myself from existence. There is very little on the Internet with my name on it to begin with - no facebook, LinkedIn, or any other social media like that. I do have a few hundred family photos from when I was much young that I scanned in. When I am close, I will say my goodbyes to my parents (again) and delete those, too.
Death is a profound experience. When you realize yours is coming and there isn't anything that can be done about it, you begin to want to disconnect from the hive and spend your last days alone to ponder your life and existence. It's not something I expected - when I was first diagnosed I thought I would want to party as much as possible until I passed - spend as much time with friends as I could. But, that turned out not to be the case.
I'm really too weak at this point to do much of anything except sit around and talk or surf, but when I left my job and cashed out my life insurance, I did spend some time volunteering and giving money away. I didn't feel any need to take pictures, or develop memories. It felt much more like a final responsibility to dispose of my wealth and give it to people who could do something good with it.
Now I really only get online to talk about my imminent death and try to pass on what little knowledge I have about the subject when the topic comes up. The truth is, death makes you grow old. I'm 40 and feel like I have lived 90 years.
Anyway, your data may mean something to someone - why wait until you die to pass it on? Give it to people now - especially those good thoughts that you think might make them happy. There's no reason for you to make someone think "why couldn't he have said this to me while he was alive??" That's just cruel.
Life is short. Shorter than you think.
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When a friend of mine died in his thirties from cancer, I got to 'hang around' with him for the months leading up. Enough weird, unexplainable things happened then, like his seeing kids flying in through the windows, his seeing 7 doors in the wall, and one night him talking to/asking someone in the empty chair next to me if 'Jack' was coming over tomorrow. He got mad at me when I interuppted. Nodding at where the person's head would be (if they were visible) he said, "Uh huh..., he is..." 'Jack' was a hospi
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All great points. You may also have distant relatives or old friends who may still be interested in your life either now or later. At the very least, historians may be interested in your life, including in your local historical society. See for example:
"Why do historians value letters and diaries"
http://historymatters.gmu.edu/mse/letters/whydo.html [gmu.edu]
"Thus, the historical value of reading diaries and letters involves understanding the significance of how individual writers employed, experimented with, or alter
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If nothing else, I am glad that the timing of everything was such that this story came along for you to post in before you could not do so; I am better for having read it and will carry the thoughts with me going forward.
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bequeath to posterity (Score:2)
What should happen, at a minimum, is that your data gets packaged up and archived for maybe a hundred years, and then open sourced.
Basically, what a lot of historical people have always done with their personal papers.
The historical value of a lifetime of data for everyone who dies would be immense. And for fans of Caprica, maybe they'll bring "you" back.
BBC radio 4 - digital legacy programme (Score:2)
Check out the radio 4 (truly excellent channel)'s recent episode on our digital legacy [bbc.co.uk] (ep3 of Out of the Ordinary) - it discusses not only what happens to your data after you die (eg people can still send you emails and unless they know you're dead just assume you're ignoring them), but also your online presences (eg your facebook page that is still active). Then there's the issue that accessing your old data might help your grieving relatives (assuming you use a different email account for porn) or hurt t
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The acronym is wrong (Score:2)
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After Our Lives?
In My Will ... (Score:1)
What really happens? (Score:1)
Keep it if you want it. (Score:1)
I wouldn't mind if my data was left up after I'm gone, in case anybody cares to see it. If you've ever contributed to a site or an online community, I think that information is nice to see for your still living loved
I was actually thinking about this the other day (Score:1)
While I tend to agree, on personal aspects, with the guy that's stage IV, I was thinking more of business type things. I sell real estate, I would hate to go out thinking I left someone unable to complete a sale or purchase and thus be unable to get on
In Soviet Russia TV watches you! (Score:1)
In America, you can always find a party . In Soviet Russia, the Party always finds YOU!! So I decided to encrypt ALL my data. The data I am going to give to my heirs will be encoded with some key on bootable flash drives and entrusted to 3 different persons, each having 2/3 of total key length. Any 2 of them (but no single person) will be able to decode them. If the Party finds any one of them while I live it will be impossible to obtain the data.
subject (Score:2)
As long as it doesn't embarrass or incriminate my friends or family members, why would I give a shit? I'd be dead.
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Why do you think that it will NOT incriminate your family members? For instance, my friend's granddaddy was a hunter and left a lot of rifles and ammo. My friend does not want to surrender it due to understandable self-defense concerns (It's Soviet Russia!) but if he dies his family members should know where his arsenal is hidden.
Last Will and Testament (Score:2)
Whatever provisions you write in your will should be followed.
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Except these provisions will be known to notary who will send them to KGB before one's death.
Your family inherits your data (Score:2)
I realise that we all like to make jokes about Slashdot readers being nerds and never having a girlfriend, but seriously... by the time most of us die, we will be married with kids and grandchildren.
If you're a newbie geek, under 20, maybe even under 30, chances are you might be single, sure.
But don't believe the stereotype. You won't be single forever.
Once you get over 30, and your attractive-to demographic becomes 25+ , CHICKS DIG STABILITY. Yeah, sure, your dream girl at school rejected you for some spor
Make history public (Score:1)
What about this? (Score:1)