
What Should Happen to People’s Online Identity When They Die? - kawera
https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2017/08/what-should-happen-to-online-identity/
======
averagewall
I don't think privacy is a new problem. When my dad died, he left piles of
personal pen-and-paper letters from his former wife and girlfriends that they
probably would have preferred strangers didn't read. He was a therapist and
also left confidential client information containing, for instance, interviews
with child sex abuse victims for court cases.

This is a problem in general when you trust something to someone to keep
confidential. When they die, it becomes part of their estate and it's not
confidential anymore. I don't see why data stored in online services should be
any different from data stored on your computer in your house. With the cloud,
it's sometimes not clear where it's being stored anyway.

~~~
TimPC
The problem as a whole isn't new, but it's ramped up to a new level and
applied more broadly. If your estate doesn't have provisions for handling your
Facebook account in it, it will get left up on the Interwebs. And some of the
distant friends who forget because of old age or were so distant they never
really knew the person past away will continue to write happy birthday wishes,
year after year. Those wishes will end up being seen by people directly
affected by the death, year after year. It's not a desirable experience. I
think the big challenge here is at the intersection of how we'd like the
privacy of data to change on passing for data that was previously semi-public
or widely shared which is new (In some sense the data is out there and can't
be changed but platforms often govern how we experience the interactions
around it). The problem you describe is kind of the opposite -- how does
confidential data stay confidential. The other direction is sort of new, and
isn't as much a data/information problem as an interaction one.

~~~
ch4ch4
I don't understand this desire to make the Internet a "Safe Space" which
doesn't offend anyone. The Internet is inherently "unsafe". If you can't
stomach the thought of someone wishing a happy birthday to a dead dude, why
not just let them know that the person is deceased?

As for confidential data, it should be encrypted at rest, so that the
decryption key disappears along with the deceased. No estate or court order
can decrypt that data.

~~~
will_brown
>As for confidential data, it should be encrypted at rest, so that the
decryption key disappears along with the deceased.

That is not an answer solution to many issues. For example, I am an attorney
and sole practitioner, if I were to die unexpectedly my clients would be
entitled to get their case files, confidential/privileged/work product
documentation can't just _disappear_ upon my death and as others have
suggested my estate could be liable for that just as likely as my estate could
be liable for the same documents being release to any 3rd party. Separate and
apart from liability I could simply prejudice my clients case in the instance
of litigation either due loss of documentation or disclosure of the same to
3rd parties.

And these are not just hypotheticals, I worked in an office building where
another attorney died unexpectedly of a heart attacker while driving, and
there was no real procedure in place, simply many in the building rallied and
took the case files and helped his clients, but who knows what documentation
was lost and never recovered, alternatively there was very likely all kinds of
breaches of professional responsibility and liability exposure, despite the
realities of the legal community rallying and doing their best in a bad
situation.

~~~
Razengan
>As for confidential data, it should be encrypted at rest, so that the
decryption key disappears along with the deceased.

> That is not an answer solution to many issues.

What happens to memory in our brain when we die? What about the things that
only we know and never tell anyone else?

Isn't that a problem? Should we make an attempt to recover a person's memories
from their corpse?

We've been dealing with irrevocable losses upon death ever since humans
started doing other things besides eating and reproducing. Our online
passwords and porn stashes are, generally, just another item on the list of
things that die with us.

\----

My aunt, who was very much like a foster mother to me, died this year after
spending 4 months in a comatose/vegetative state. Before that she had suffered
a stroke which rendered her unable to write anything. So for the last couple
years of her life, she was unable to leave behind her thoughts (I deeply
regret not helping her use her iPad for that), and not even able to tell her
family anything in the last few months, despite being able to see us and hear
us.

We don't even have any recent pictures of her, let alone videos. I'm thinking
of contacting her phone company and requesting if they could provide us with a
recording from a random call, just so we can listen to her voice, but I doubt
they will oblige.

------
whiddershins
They are prioritizing the wishes of the dead over those of the living.

If the wife wants to friend the dead husband, I don't think it's so important
"what he would have wanted."

They should prioritize the wishes of the next of kin, or executrix of his
will, or whomever our traditions and legal system has figured out can make
this decision.

We as a society came to these practices over many generations. They exist for
a reason, and the way this is phrased, it seems Facebook is putting themselves
in the position of reinventing the wheel for whatever reasons they have. Which
may or may not be in the interests of the survivors of the deceased.

~~~
maxerickson
The whole concept of a will is about respecting the wishes of the dead.

~~~
uiri
No it's not.

The initial property division is done by a will because it is the only neutral
way to decide who is to divide up an estate and how they are supposed to do
it. If Bob leaves his boat to his daughter Charlotte instead of his son David,
that is much cleaner than having David and Charlotte fighting over it.

After the estate is settled, the heirs are free to do whatever they want with
their inherited property. If Charlotte didn't really care for the boat but
David really wanted it, she is free to sell it to him or gift it outright. Or
she can sell it to a third party. Charlotte shouldn't feel guilty or pressured
by a dead man to enjoy the boat.

~~~
maxerickson
You are just choosing a precise meaning for "wishes" and hammering on that.

Look at the context and consider a scenario where a will has a statement that
Facebook should be deleted (or frozen or whatever). The comment I replied to
implies the statement shouldn't matter if someone living wants something else.

My meaning was something like the whole concept of a will is about respecting
and recognizing the priorities expressed by the dead.

I don't disagree with what you say about what people do with things they
inherit, but you are imputing an awful lot of meaning to make that a
contradiction of my sentence that I posted above.

~~~
uiri
What if a will states that the deceased wants to be cremated with no funeral,
wake nor any other ceremony? The wishes of the executor/executrix or next of
kin to have a memorial service would likely trump that. I think someone's
Facebook account is closer to this scenario than to a bank account, house,
vehicle, or other property.

I'm sorry if I misconstrued your use of the word wishes. I feel that the whole
concept of a will is the best solution that we as a society have found for
determining what to do with a person's possessions when they die. The dead
can't expect their priorities to be acted upon without question since it is
the living who have to deal with the consequences of those priorities.

------
danso
The Facebook paper on this topic ("Legacy Contact: Designing and implementing
stewardship at Facebook") is one of my favorites from their publications repo.
Not highly-technical, but relatively detailed as it explores the human side of
the design tradeoffs needed to accommodate an unavoidably difficult and varied
situation:

[https://research.fb.com/publications/legacy-contact-
designin...](https://research.fb.com/publications/legacy-contact-designing-
and-implementing-stewardship-at-facebook/)

------
beters
Despite appearances, Facebook is not impartial to this question whatsoever.
They would profit greatly from keeping dead people's profiles on their site.

~~~
ucha
How would they profit _greatly_?

~~~
danso
Maybe "greatly" is too strong a word but it definitely helps to cement
Facebook as the clearinghouse of memories, both for the living and dead.

------
losteverything
They need to establish a policy for 3 or 4 or 5 generations from now. Like the
us government allowing old census data but not new.

As a genealogy fan with known roots spanning centuries, at some point there no
longer is any connection or feeling to a ggggf or gggg aunt.

I absolutely CRAVE to learn what life was like for my family. Why did one
uncle hunt and send birds eggs overseas? Or one gggggm rode horseback to come
to aid revolutionary soldiers? What battle?

Facebook probably will just be an archive 120 years from now. But a extreme
long term policy will assist future genealogists. Something like "after 80
years past the death, all fb related data is available." after 25 years its
available to direct line descendants.

~~~
newscracker
> Facebook probably will just be an archive 120 years from now. But a extreme
> long term policy will assist future genealogists. Something like "after 80
> years past the death, all fb related data is available." after 25 years its
> available to direct line descendants.

This sounds highly troubling to me. Imagine being persecuted in your life
because some ggggm whom you never knew about was an extremist (racist and what
not - let your imagination run wild on how despicable that person was during
their time). Your craving to learn about your family decades or centuries ago
must not become an overriding factor for the entire society to abide by. The
"right to be forgotten" [1], though not perfect, has a lot of value for
humans.

On Facebook specifically, it is a highly buggy platform. Even as of yesterday,
I couldn't get search to find recent content that I knew was there. I had to
resort to other (slower and cumbersome) ways of finding it. This has been a
long standing problem (several years). Content discovery in Facebook is
terrible, and hence assuming Facebook to be the custodian of one's life
experiences is a very, very poor choice, in my observation. Facebook _is not_
the platform for archival!

[1]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_be_forgotten](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_be_forgotten)

~~~
jpttsn
Shouldn't we instead strive for the "right" not to be judged by the actions of
our ancestors?

I'm sure nobody actively condones persecution of people in revenge for what
their ancestors did. But if we sweep anything _n_ generations back under the
carpet, aren't we implying that anything less than _n_ generations back is
fair game for vendettas?

~~~
Aloha
I fear this may be a fundamental part of human nature - some folks simply
cannot let go of the past - no matter how distant it was.

~~~
jpttsn
While human nature can excuse some lasting response to lived experience, I
think there's a wider gap to bridge before ethics allows us to generalize and
map past crimes to present perpetrators.

------
drewmol
The answer is clear: the data should be monitized in a way that best minimizes
the potential creation of social or political sentiment to create roadblocks
which may diminish future monitization of similar data.

~~~
exodust
Read it twice. Not clear.

------
fenesiistvan
Why they don't just ask it while the account owner is still alive? There
should be some settings for this. Some people might also pay for such a
service (keep my account for 100 years for $99).

~~~
tonyztan
They do allow users to indicate their preferences.

 _" Memorialization is our default action, but we know that some people might
not want their account preserved this way. They might prefer that we delete
their profile. Recognizing this, we give people a way to let us know they want
their account permanently deleted when they die. We may also delete profiles
when the next of kin tells us that the deceased loved one would have preferred
that we delete the account rather than memorialize it.

Other people might want a friend or family member to be able to manage their
profile as a memorial site after their death. That’s why in 2015, we created
the option for people to choose a legacy contact. A legacy contact is a family
member or friend who can manage certain features on your account if you pass
away, such as changing your profile picture, accepting friend requests or
adding a pinned post to the top of your profile. They can also elect to delete
your account."_

------
stronglikedan
Maybe it should become part of the estate, but I don't know enough about that
to say how. If it's part of a will then honor that, otherwise it the next of
kin or whatever who decides what to do with it (in a limited fashion that
prevents identity theft - maybe freeze it or delete it being the only
options).

------
sp_nster
In all seriousness, I thumbs up (on LinkedIn) the birthday of a colleague who
passed away a couple of years ago.

------
williamscales
Write down your password manager master password in your will along with
instructions about what to do when you die.

~~~
xxXXxx-
And assume your family knows exactly how to do whatever you want? What about
2FA?

~~~
codingdave
I include as much information as I can in my "What to do if I die"
documentation that my wife has. But much of the stuff that has 2FA is also
paid, so it falls under the category of, "Just cancel my credit card, and the
accounts will disappear on their own."

~~~
joshfarrant
That's an interesting idea, care to elaborate on the documentation a bit more?

~~~
codingdave
It is a list of the various accounts I have that would need action. Mostly, I
instruct her to decide for herself what she wants to do with my web sites and
email addresses, but I give her enough info to gain access to it all, and
recommend which accounts should be switched to her credit card instead of mine
(Netflix, for example.) It doesn't list everything -- this HN account for
example, is not mentioned, and would just go silent.

I also list out who needs to be informed -- who to contact directly by phone,
who to email.

It isn't intended to be a will - it is more a list of the little details of my
life that are not part of our shared existence, that would probably be
forgotten in the turmoil, so I thought of them ahead of time.

I look at it a few times a year and keep it up to date. And I hope it is a
wasted effort.

------
hyperman1
A few years ago my brother died, unexpectedly, in his thirties, in a neighbour
country. He travelled a lot and had friends all over the planet. We didn't
know most of them. Their email adresses were probably in his gmail account, so
we thought to get it assigned to us.

Procedure is in this page:
[https://support.google.com/accounts/troubleshooter/6357590?h...](https://support.google.com/accounts/troubleshooter/6357590?hl=nl#ts=6357650)
. The problem: It asks for a court order in the united states. No idea why the
courts are even involved in this case, it seems like a basic civic issue, but
the US seems to do a lot by court. Or not, I don't actually know.

So here we are, in grief, far from home, burial in a week, horrible mess to
sort out, and google wants some legal papers from some court half the planet
away, in a completely alien legal system where I even don't know what my basic
rights are. Even if google has local presence in all of the countrys involved.
No chance to fix that in a week.

I hope like hell we found most of his important friends.

Even so, if any googler happens to read this: Please fix that. I know you
cant' give access to random strangers, but there's got to be a better way,
involving at least the local legal system.

------
developer2
To put it bluntly: fuck the living. It's impossible to please every living
relative and close friend.

The solution with Facebook is simple: if you don't want to have a deceased
person showing up on your feed, unfriend them and add them to your block list.
Assuming Facebook is well-designed, blocking someone should prevent them from
ever showing up in your feed, even if others are tagging them in photos or
posting to their wall. As for your being aware that "the profile is still
there and other people are interacting with it", get over it. It's not your
place to dictate how others should deal with the death. You have the choice to
not look; so don't look if you don't want to. Lack of self-control to not
check back every month to see what other people are doing is not a valid
reason to nuke the profile from orbit.

Speaking to the internet at large: the only way to mandate how companies
_must_ respond to news of a death would require tying _every single page load
on the internet_ to an official government ID. Nobody wants to provide their
government ID to ThePirateBay and PornHub just so that their entire online
identity can uniformly vanish upon death.

How many people burn their photo albums when a loved one dies, in order to
remove all traces of that person? Nobody. Why should the digital equivalent be
any different? More simply, _why_ should an online presence be terminated?
Just... "why?". I suspect every attempted answer to that question is born of
self-centred excuses that have no merit; ie: based on "I" or "me" \- " _I_
don't want to be reminded", "It pains _me_ to see", etc.

tldr; The whole think stinks of "Won't somebody think of the children?!", but
instead it's "Won't somebody think of me me me me me?!". The level of
absurdity seems equivalent to me.

------
dbg31415
I've got a deadman switch with my password manager. A week after I don't
respond, my trusted friend has instructions to go in and delete everything.
Also to take a power drill to my laptops and home NAS.

It all becomes info out of context, photos and conversations between people
whose confidence I would keep in life. Has value to me, but it should all be
burnt when I go.

------
DanBC
> Depending on the circumstances of a person’s death, those online reminders
> can be overwhelming. A mother who loses her daughter to domestic violence
> may feel sick when she looks online and sees photos of her daughter’s
> wedding day

> When people come to Facebook after suffering a loss, we want them to feel
> comfort, not pain,

Lying cunts.

[http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/hollie-
gazzar...](http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/hollie-gazzard-
facebook-refuses-to-remove-photograph-of-murder-victim-posing-with-killer-
ex-a6711611.html)

> The family of a young hairdresser murdered in a savage attack by her ex-
> boyfriend have repeatedly appealed to Facebook to remove photographs of the
> pair together.

> Nine images of Hollie Gazzard, 20, who was stabbed 14 times by Asher Maslin
> in February last year, are still visible online.

(They have, eventually, removed the images).

------
ams6110
Online doesn't really make anything much different. When a loved one dies, you
grieve, and eventually come to terms with it and move on. You get bills,
letters, Christmas cards, junk mail, etc. for a while after the person is
gone. Charities are the worst. I still get letters from various charties,
addressed to my mother who has been dead for nine years.

Facebook doesn't really change things, much as they might like to believe that
people's lives hinge on their service.

~~~
danso
That seems an overly simplistic way to look at things. Everything about
computation isn't "much different" since it's literally built on a system of
switches and logic gates. It's the scalability and speed that makes the
difference, I mean, that's arguably why Facebook.com became a thing even
though "face books" at Harvard have existed for years/decades [0].

In the case of death, there's the "new" issue that someone's Facebook account
is basically an instantly-worldwide-accessible and permanent gravesite when
they die. In the case of sudden death, there's a real issue of what that
person would want on what's become an ad-hoc memorial site for perpetuity. And
because it's a web service, there's the technical issue of access control,
along with all the legal issues that have been around since the pre-Internet
days.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Face_book](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Face_book)

------
specialist
A dead coworker's Facebook profile was hijacked, started spamming. It was very
distressing.

Minimally:

Subscribe to the SSA Death Registry (or local equivalent), integrate the data.
Set a flag in (potentially) matching profile(s). Put account into some kind of
"might be dead" probationary state, for further adjudication.

Having worked on both medical and voter registration records, this is normal
activity. Social media, email hosts, etc, should do the same.

------
Bitto
Okay, this is going to sound stupid. May be someone would like to receive a
"Merry Xmas and happy new year" or "Happy b'day" message from their lost loved
ones. FB should give me an option to do that before i die. May be a checkbox
somewhere in the settings.

[ ] send wishes automatically if inactive for 1 year

~~~
losteverything
I totally agree, but based on the reaction to this guys christmas cards after
he died [1] this idea is not received well (which i dont understand). You are
thinking about loved ones in the future by your request. I doube FB would go
for it.

[1] [http://www.nbcnews.com/id/22394223/ns/us_news-
weird_news/t/d...](http://www.nbcnews.com/id/22394223/ns/us_news-
weird_news/t/dead-man-sends-cards-heaven/)

------
shinamee
This is a very important topic, in fact, I was almost making a service that
would somehow help people share their online identities/access to their next
of kin if such incident should occur.

Unfortunately, the feedbacks wasn't so good, I had to shut it down.

I don't think any SINGLE social media company can solve this.

------
CryptoFascist
Simple. Express in your will that you wish your social media account
credentials to be posted to 4chan, or whatever the equivalent of the day is,
with instructions to 'have at it, jerks'.

That way, your online identity gets to be like Jim Morrison's grave.

~~~
matt4077
Jimbo's grave usually has an empty bottle with a rose in it. Plus sometimes a
threesome of cute hippies, if it's an abnormally warm night.

I believe 4chan has neither the taste nor the means to make something like
that happen.

------
maerF0x0
The story at the beginning is so incredibly sad. We need to connect as much as
we can while we're alive. Not through facebook. So that we have minimal/no
regrets once its too late.

------
rajeshmr
why not provide a tool like google to self-destruct profile if not logged in
within a time frame ? Why is facebook taking the pain of resolving conflicts
and becoming a mediator and judge etc ? Instead of giving the profile owners
with tools to control what should happen in case of death or inactivity for a
long period (like google?) ?

~~~
nicky0
Facebook does provide these very tools. In settings, you can appoint a legacy
contact and/or you can state what you want to happen to your profile when you
die.

------
ge96
There's a green LED on somewhere, and when I die, it stays on for a second,
then fades.

------
erik_landerholm
Specify in a will if you care.

------
WalterBright
It passes to the heirs as described in deceased's will.

------
Angostura
The answer seems simple. Add a clause to your will.

------
denisehilton
All Internet history of individuals who die should be removed. There should
also be regard for self-respect even in technology.

~~~
white-flame
Plenty of people have left important and informative publicly posted content,
commonly linked to by others. Automatically removing those from the net would
be a massive disservice to the deceased, eliminating the fruit of their work &
passions and their voice from history.

------
sahin-boydas
caprica :)))

