Death and the Internet

A recent extension to the cultural relationship with death is the increasing number of people who die having created a large amount of digital content, such as social media profiles, that will remain after death. This may include upset caused by automated features of dormant accounts (e.g. birthday reminders), uncertainty of the deceased's preferences that profiles be deleted or left as a memorial, or whether information that may violate the deceased's privacy (such as email or browser history) should be made accessible to family.

Issues with how this information is sensitively dealt with are further complicated as it may belong to the service provider (not the deceased) and many do not have clear policies on what happens to the accounts of deceased users. While some sites, including Facebook and Twitter, have policies related to death, others remain dormant until deleted due to inactivity or transferred to family or friends. It is expected that the accounts of deceased people will outnumber those of active users unless provided include specific policies and accounts' management tools.

Gmail and Hotmail allow the email accounts of the deceased to be accessed, provided certain requirements are met. Yahoo! Mail will not provide access, citing the No Right of Survivorship and Non-Transferability clause in the Yahoo! terms of service. In 2005 Yahoo! was ordered by the Probate Court of Oakland County, Michigan to release emails of deceased US Marine Justin Ellsworth to his father, John Ellsworth.

Facebook's policy on death is to turn the deceased user's profile into a memorial, "as a place where people can save and share their memories of those who've passed." Memorializing of a profile involves: the deceased user no longer showing up in the "Suggestions" box on the right-hand side of the homepage; the privacy setting is altered so that only confirmed friends can view the profile and search for it; contact information and status updates are removed; no one is able to log into the account in the future. Deletion of an account entails the complete removal of the deceased user's data from the online platform, however Facebook holds the legal right to sustain the user's credentials for up to 90 days after request of deletion.

In order to memorialize deceased person's account, a special contact form must be filled out. In this contact form, a proof of death must be provided, such as an obituary or news article. Both family members and non-family members are allowed to submit this form.

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Wikipedia