
What happens to my late husband’s digital life now he’s gone? - bootload
http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/jul/04/what-happens-to-my-late-husbands-digital-life-now-hes-gone
======
DanBC
Apple (in England) copper-bottoms laws, and require too much documentation.

When a person dies their estate goes through probabte. You get official
documents as a result. That documentarion is effectively a court order - they
are good enough to get banks to release funds from the dead person's account
to the executor of the will.

Apple sometimes do not recognise those documents and refuse to unlock devices
that used to belong to dead people, even if the device is mentioned in the
dead person's will.

[http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-26448158](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-26448158)

Here they're not asking for access to the information - they just want the
device to be unlocked. Apple recognised, after publication, that they'd made
an error in this case, but they maintain that a court order is required for
access to iCloud accounts. But they don't recognise grants of probate as valid
court orders.

~~~
higherpurpose
Unlock the devices? If the owner used fingerprint authentication or a
passphrase, I would _hope_ Apple _can 't_ unlock those devices.

Also, I would imagine not everyone would want their devices unlocked by family
members if they die say in an accident.

~~~
hobarrera
> Also, I would imagine not everyone would want their devices unlocked by
> family members if they die say in an accident.

Why should the opinion of the dead be relevant in any way?

~~~
stretchwithme
It should only matter to you if you think you or someone you care about will
die some day.

~~~
hobarrera
> It should only matter to you if you think you or someone you care about will
> die some day.

Why? When I'm dead, anything that anybody does will no affect me. (assuming I
had an iPhone) Apple shouldn't not-unlock it because I might not want that. I
want nothing, since I'm dead.

------
batou
I've solved this the easy way. The only "online service" I use is an IMAP box
and run that using inbox zero. Everything important is archived on disk in eml
files. We share all our passwords in a single keepaas database and everything
we have data-wise is in a shared folder on a shared computer. Backups are all
in known locations. We regularly empty our phones an cameras and transcode
everything into neutral formats.

The digital life is 22Gb of photos and videos spanning 13 years so far.

So there isn't a digital life as such, just a pool of electronic memories and
information which we share. I couldn't use anything deeper after watching a
friend go through the painful process of losing everything tied to an
ecosystem of a software vendor.

Oh and I'll only use a system that respects my control for my data. Currently
this is windows 8.1 but with the introduction of 10, it appears I'm not going
to have to dump that due to the incoming app ecosystem and hit Linux.

If this all looks like a lot of effort, you're only doing the work up front.
Retrospectively if you don't do this, you're deferring a world of pain.

~~~
danieldk
Indeed, I think that having a shared keychain is very important. I have heard
of people planned to do such a thing, but never did before it was too late.
Sorting out the digital life off- and online will be a mess without it. Do it
today.

We have also been moving stuff out of data silos and are moving back to plain
old files where possible. E.g. administrative stuff we share using Bittorrent
Sync (because it is peer to peer and encrypted) and we store photos in Dropbox
(because they are easier to share with family that way). We considered doing
everything with BTSync, but on iOS the interface is too difficult for non
tech-savvy family.

~~~
batou
I tried to sync for several years and it never worked. I tried everything.
Eventually we just moved to using one computer and sharing it. Its not healthy
to spend all the time on it anyway. Having a pooled machine has a number of
social benefits as well.

So we have a single laptop, three smartphones (my oldest daughter has one as
well) and they're all handed in weekly to me for data extraction and archival.

The laptop is a Lenovo X201 so it can go anywhere and we have a docking
station and full desktop setup if you need anything a little more healthy to
use.

~~~
walterbell
Did you consider something like a Synology NAS, which has free mobile apps for
syncing?

~~~
batou
Yes. I had one. It died suddenly and left me with a £400 bill for a new one.
Fortunately I backed up the NAS to an external disk but from this and other
experiences, I've come to a general rule:

 _the reliability of a backup system is inversely proportional to the number
of moving parts_

Hence why I use beyond compare to manually sync files to two physical mediums
from the master copy on my laptop. One encrypted USB stick I carry on me at
all times and one hard disk that lives in a fire safe.

~~~
oracuk
Moving hard disks back and forth to my fire safe is a pain. A hardened usb
disk that is itself fire-rated. That I would buy.

~~~
TheLoneWolfling
It's hard to make anything small fire-rated, due to thermal inertia (or
rather, the lack thereof).

I'm surprised I haven't seen a NAS with the hard drive enclosure fire-rated.

------
Udo
_" Facebook tends to “memorialise” their account – freeze them so they can be
viewed, but providing no access to past messages. [...] Facebook also offended
a fair number of bereaved people with its Year in Review clips [...] The
problem was that for some, these were pictures of dead loved ones."_

Here is something I _really_ don't understand. For some reason it's apparently
preferred, both by Facebook as well as people overall, to rub out a deceased
person's digital existence - as opposed to preserving a bit of their life and
writing for posterity.

To me, the "memorialization" of FB accounts looks like an almost cynical
choice of words considering what it actually entails. Do we really prefer to
pretend dead people never existed in the first place?

~~~
DanBC
> Facebook also offended a fair number of bereaved people with its Year in
> Review clips [...] The problem was that for some, these were pictures of
> dead loved ones."

There was a recent ad on FB from a maker of teapods that said something like
"share a cup of tea with your dad". Unfortunately, that ad was shown to people
whose fathers were dead or abusive. My dad died before FB so I've never had
any account in my friends list that an algorithm could consider to be my
father. I'd link to it but I genuinely have no idea how to link to a Facebook
post. :-/

[https://www.facebook.com/TassimoUK?pnref=story](https://www.facebook.com/TassimoUK?pnref=story)
and the "Share a cuppa with your dad and show him how much you care this
Father’s Day ‪#‎ChooseNotToChoose‬" which has about 500 comments of mostly
people saying their father is dead.

~~~
madeofpalk
> There was a recent ad on FB from a maker of teapods that said something like
> "share a cup of tea with your dad". Unfortunately, that ad was shown to
> people whose fathers were dead or abusive. My dad died before FB so I've
> never had any account in my friends list that an algorithm could consider to
> be my father. I'd link to it but I genuinely have no idea how to link to a
> Facebook post. :-/

Is that really fair? How is that different from an ad on TV saying the same
thing?

~~~
DanBC
TV ads never claim to harvest my data to make ads "more relevant" to "my
interests".

That's a thing that Facebook and most online add networks claim.

~~~
madeofpalk
True, however the 'ad' in particular was just a generic (perhaps promoted?)
status update to a #Brand page
[https://www.facebook.com/TassimoUK](https://www.facebook.com/TassimoUK)

------
bryang
Skype is one of my most hated programs.

And a reason for that is the utter absurdity in regards to account deletion.
You have to do fairly standard things like identify email, password and some
contacts.... but you also have to know the EXACT month and year of which you
signed up. And unless you got lucky and didn't delete your sign up email up
there is no possible way to find out. When I first signed up, I had a
ridiculous name like everyone else did back in the day, and I wanted to just
move on. Not very serious, I know, but this issue can be for many
circumstances.

I really wish that some legislation would be passed for a "Nuke" button
standard on all digital platforms that allows you or a designed individual to
erase profiles at will.

~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
> And unless you got lucky and didn't delete your sign up email there is no
> possible way to find out.

What, do people really delete read email?

~~~
fao_
I use a 503(c) service for email, the only thing is that they rely on
dontations, so the more space I use the more it'll cost them. So out of being
curteous to them, I delete any unwanted email. One other reason I delete email
is because I like having a 'clean' inbox.

But despite all of that, it's really Skype's fault for assuming that a user
will keep randomly chosen, arbitrary data like that. Not all of us have
photographic memories, so the vast userbase, as a result, will have great
difficulty in deleting their account. There's also a very high probability
that it's done by Skype deliberately, to stop people deleting their accounts (
_Because data mining is 'phun'!_)

~~~
harryjo
If you give that 503(c) $10, that will cover email _storage_ forever.

------
Theodores
Relatively speaking those parents of mine are to pop their clogs one day
(well, Burkenstock sandals, one day being many years hence). I would not be
happy about deleting everything on their PC's, I would want stuff kept.

However...

With my own 'digital life' I would prefer people to just fdisk/powerwash my
PC-style devices and send the things to the charity shop. There really would
be nothing to see on any of my machines, the cloud can just be forgotten,
nothing really matters. I don't know if others would see it that way though.
My point being that 'what you would do' concerning your oh-so-precious online
life is different to what you might think when it comes to someone else's
digital life.

------
anon4
The only digital life I'm worried about in the event of my untimely death is
the few IRC channels I frequent. Just let those guys know I'm gone, put up a
"He's dead, Jim, take what you want." on my GitHub and leave the rest to bit-
rot. I don't think the cloud cares that I won't feed it data no more.

~~~
batou
Write a dead man's switch script. You just have to remind it you're not dead
once a month for example.

However don't do what a colleague of mine did back in the early 00s. after a
motorcycle accident he was in hospital for three weeks. This was back in the
days before ubiquitous internet access (horrible times!). His dead mans switch
went off after two weeks and caused an email to be sent to his boss to call
him a vacuous cunt. Obviously that didn't go down well at all.

~~~
paublyrne
Better to set it for two months.

~~~
SapphireSun
Why not six or a year? It'll be very hard to screw that up and you can Hari
Seldon your friends and relatives.

~~~
developer1
You also have to be sure the machine you're hosting this on won't be taken
down if you really die and aren't around to manage/pay for it anymore. Server
in your closet? The plug will be pulled long before 6 months pass after you're
gone. Server in a data center? You can't be paying for that monthly, as
chances are your credit card will be cancelled and your machine will be shut
down for non-payment before your 6 month deadline. Also, hardware failure
makes it a possibility that your server will not survive 6 months uptime
anyway.

Basically, dead man's switch is not even remotely guaranteed to work.

~~~
SapphireSun
Just put that server payment in your will and tell your executor to not reveal
its existence. Alternatively, pay on an annual basis.

------
evantahler
A shared and synced 1password vault between family members is the best option
I've seen so far. You can have your vault, a work vault, a family fault, etc
which is kept in sync with separate permissions.

------
stretchwithme
Hopefully, our loved ones' digital lives will hang around forever. Storage is
getting cheaper and cheaper, after all.

My half brother, who we just found in 2005, started a Facebook account before
he died. He added me and never got around to adding anybody else. I can post
things on his wall, but no one sees them.

Both my parents have passed away and pass by them in my contacts. I won't
deleting them, ever. I did update my Dad's location, though, just so I can
always use that for directions to their grave.

------
marincounty
I didn't read the article, but I get the drift. I knew a guy was in a very
unhappy marriage. He didn't have a large online presence, but his posts and
pictures were important to him. You couldn't tell he was in a unhappy marriage
--unless you knew him. His wife was not in any of his pictures, nor did he
talk about her.

Well he died in his sleep one night. The next day, all his accounts were taken
down. I don't know who removed all his accounts, but they were gone. My point
is unless you have an agreement, or the surviving spouse is slandered in some
way; I think, in most cases, if the surviving spouse should just use the
passwords to convey the obituary notice.

(I think I was bothered with just how quick his accounts vanished? All his
accounts were on free sites. I didn't see any need to close them all down.
Plus, after all the verbal abuse, and drama--his only enjoyment, or escapism
was going online?)

