Digital Estate funeral plans

You may have given thought to what happens when you die, but have you given digital death much thought, if any? Given today’s memorial service technology, as well as our lives becoming increasingly digital, funeral plans are starting to include plans for our online personas when we die.

Digital Death

Whilst there may not yet be a holistic approach to what happens online when a person dies, here are a few unique initiatives that are beginning to raise awareness to the importance of planning for a digital death.

Look at this statistic: three social media users die every minute. That means that there could be up to 1.78 million social networking accounts left in limbo because users hadn’t prepared for their digital death the same way they prepared their funeral plans. As that number is likely to grow exponentially, how many pages of deceased users will there be in, say, 10 years from now? How will non-tech savvy loved ones left behind manage digital content?

Leaving a Digital Legacy

While you get to include instructions for your service, memorial and belongings in your funeral plans, you should be including instructions for your digital paraphernalia – from what to do with your social media accounts to who gets to keep your digital music, videos and photos and who gets your gaming account or if you’d prefer for it to be shut down. Do you run an online store? Are you a member of a blogging community or special interest forum? Then you’ll need to plan for the management of these too. Perhaps you’d like your digital estate executor to leave one last status update or post informing your fans, followers and friends of your death. These are just some of the things to think about when devising funeral plans.

Digital Privacy

While many online accounts have a policy that dictates what will happen to the account when you pass on, there is still policies in place to protect your privacy after your passing. For example, would you want your parents reading those status updates? Would you want a spouse reading your private emails? Think about your inbox or public photos. What digital legacy will you be leaving behind?

But it’s not only your privacy to think about: what happens to your private message when you die? Once private information is not bound by the terms and conditions of a friendship but by those of a social network or email service provider, what will happen to your online personality?

In an age where we practically live online – from our bank accounts and digital legal documents to socialising, communicating, learning, shopping, selling, gaming, reading and downloading media, digital estate planning has become a vital part of funeral plans. From simply leaving instructions as to what you would like doing with your online accounts when you’re gone to planning for your funeral or memorial to be streamed live to overseas relatives or forums of which you were a part of, there are many elements to digital legacies.

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Created on Dec 31st 1969 18:00. Viewed 0 times.

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