What happens to your online posts when you die?

KingOfSpades

KingOfSpades

Community Member
MBTI
INFJ
Recently I've noticed memorials on Facebook for people who have passed away and things like that, and it got me wondering what happens to all your online activity -- email, forum postings, etc -- when you pass on.

Back in the old days, people used to leave clauses in their will stipulating that their personal letters and notes would be burned. I guess you can't really do that anymore! Still -- so much of what we write is private.

The thought that someone 1000 years from now could have access to my emails (or anyone's emails) in some Google archive is a bit weird.

So what do you think happens? What would you want to happen?

Personally I'm thinking that when I get around to writing a will, I'll put a clause saying that the executor should contact all online service providers with my login/password and copy of a death certificate and request that my accounts be deleted...

Hopefully not too morbid of a topic!!
 
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I've actually thought about that as well. I planned on just leaving my passwords and logins somewhere for my heirs to deal with


Or I can just remain as some digital anomaly for someone to chuckle at many many years down the road.
 
Maybe email just goes away if no one logs in for a year or something? I wonder Google's policy is.

Interesting how on facebook/myspace and the like, the pages remain sometimes and people convert the deceased's profile into online memorials -- internet gravestones, if you will.
 
I was kind of hoping throughout the years that internet and hard drive decay would eventually wipe my existence clean.

Maybe this is off topic but the thought of being "immortalized" in a statue or a book or something turns me off big time. I'd prefer to turn back into energy when I died and everything I ever did do the same.
 
Nope...I want all of that stuff erased....If I don't do it at some point myself. I don't agree with facebooks new policy that even if you delete your account they can hold all your information
 
Agreed -- I want all my stuff erased too. But with Google, my thought is now they can just keep exchanging servers every decade or whatever in perpetuity -- at least in theory!!
 
Our posts and blogs etc. will become cultural artifacts to be discovered. Yep. They will study us and probably be baffled by all the silly memes that arise such as rick rollin' and lolcats etc..
 
merrytrees said:
Our posts and blogs etc. will become cultural artifacts to be discovered. Yep. They will study us and probably be baffled by all the silly memes that arise such as rick rollin' and lolcats etc..
Click to expand...

Haha...baffled or horrified, one of the two i suspect
 
alcyone said:
I don't agree with facebooks new policy that even if you delete your account they can hold all your information
Click to expand...

agreed, as well. from what i know, they're still not making any profit off the site -- they are valued very high, but still don't have a viable business model. maybe they are looking for some way to monetize content with the 'perpetual license'.
 
I hadn't taken it quite that far, but I've often wondered what it will be like when I'm old (like Grandpa-old) to be able to look back on all this young-and-foolish stuff. Hmmm... Maybe I'll just develop convenient amnesia.

And when I eventually die, if I've still got friends online, I'd like them to know, but I don't mind if my posts etc stay online.
 
Can you imagine what the nursing homes are going to have to do to upgrade when our generations get there?
 
*creaky crabby old lady voice*

Where's My blackberry!

Why is my wireless down!

damn it! How am I gonna remember what pills to take when without my iphone! It's all on my iPHONE! Ahhhhh!
 
I've been on some forums where people have died, kinda freaks me out when people bump old threads with them posting in them.

I just think of them as memoirs of a sort, a little bit of Quinlan for the internets.
 
If you die, I refuse to sift through all of your post just deleting, your dead what do you care if people read what you did with your weekend.
 
O M G - this thread is horrible. I feel so ill, I have never been able to manage this topic. Hence, from what I have seen, maybe it is worse for ST's because their behaviour change enormously when this matter is brought up.

Honestly no one is ever going to delete my posts, by means deleting my impact on history.
 
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