Mashable - The Social Media Guide - Latest Comments in Legacy Locker: Pass On Your Digital Assets After You’ve Passed On

Re: Legacy Locker: Pass On Your Digital Assets After You’ve Passed On

Simon Mainwaring — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 12:30:33 -0000

Thought this would be of interest: simonmainwaring.com/blog

You may die but don't expect your digital assets to go with you. Thanks to Legacy Locker, those instant tweets have been granted immortality.

The concept is simple and suddenly obvious. They protect everything you create on the internet for your trust or estate (just as you do with your car, house or retirement account).

It’s also a little frightening. Wasn’t the unspoken premise of instantaneous communication that you could shoot from the hip and speak freely? Should we now censor ourselves, or at least consider who else might see it after you're gone? Enough people have been fired or exposed for having an affair by online postings for us to know that digital assets, left unmanaged, can cause a lot of trouble.

For instance, what happens when beneficiaries start fighting over your digital assets? And who’s to say what they will do with them? Salacious exposes are just as profitable when stuffed with digital goodies.

If you do take action, where do you draw the line? While that film you made is clearly valuable, is your warning you gave against mixing hot sake and chocolate pop rocks any less “ownable”? If not to you, than to squabbling relatives?

How do we filter who can see what? As parents we lock the door to our bedrooms (you know when) and put blocks on ours kid’s computers. Do we need to filter our digital lives in the same way for fear of their life after your death?

The warning signs are here. Sites like MyDeathSpace.com provide obituaries for MySpace users. Even after your death and despite profile protection by MySpace, people can discover the details of your untimely passing. Finally, online shrines and memorials live on well beyond the death and grieving process. Can the days of legacy hacking be far away?

It’s hardly surprising that as our attention, creative contributions and real life relationships migrate online, ownership issues quickly followed. It requires that we filter what we want keep for posterity and what we want to fade away.

The salient advice seems to be the same as ever: “Sharer Beware”. What we say in the spur of the moment may just live on forever.

PS. Huge Mashable fan. Thanks for all the great thinking.

Re: Legacy Locker: Pass On Your Digital Assets After You’ve Passed On

Rebecca — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 16:09:19 -0000

This is just... gruesome.

Re: Legacy Locker: Pass On Your Digital Assets After You’ve Passed On

amazingaaron — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 19:05:03 -0000

Sounds like a great idea.

Re: Legacy Locker: Pass On Your Digital Assets After You’ve Passed On

Stefan Waidele — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 09:01:36 -0000

I honestly and seriously hope that I will out-live most if not all of the Webservices which are online today.

Re: Legacy Locker: Pass On Your Digital Assets After You’ve Passed On

Phil Harper — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 05:13:32 -0000

It's amazing that it's taken this long for a company to step up to the plate and offer a solution to managing your digital assets once you die.

Re: Legacy Locker: Pass On Your Digital Assets After You’ve Passed On

bobstewart — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 13:43:33 -0000

Also be sure to check out the free and unlimited encrypted equivalent coming soon at http://VitalLock.com

Re: Legacy Locker: Pass On Your Digital Assets After You’ve Passed On

EJWilliams — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 13:39:01 -0000

I think it's a great idea, I just had a close call the other day with a heat stroke, I felt it was the end actually. I am an artist and very visible all over the internet. I have so much more to live and I was thinking the next day after recovering from my illness that I need to write down all the websites I am on with images of my art. Since there are so many, my kids would not be able to locate and delete them all without my making of a record book. This is exactly what I need.

Re: Legacy Locker: Pass On Your Digital Assets After You’ve Passed On

Matt — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 12:27:37 -0000

Why is it such an amazing idea? You could leave a written set of instructions in your will. Stored in a safe with the rest of your important shit with a solicitor or wherever. Safer than on a web server's hard disk I think.

Re: Legacy Locker: Pass On Your Digital Assets After You’ve Passed On

Michael Bauser — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 12:22:56 -0000

By the time I die, I hope there's a more sophisticated way of maintaining my twitterfeed than giving it to a relative. Like maybe a bargain-basement AI digesting my lifetime of tweets to produce Bauser-like tweets. Which sadly, would mostly be tweeting about late planes to Boston and hotel room service. I'll be an cranky undead business traveller!

If that doesn't work, I'll just have all my old tweets carved on the walls of my pyramid. That'll screw with the archaeologists. "Professor, what's a fail whale?

Re: Legacy Locker: Pass On Your Digital Assets After You’ve Passed On

Alana Moceri — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 11:53:01 -0000

this is a great idea--just recently i was notified of someone's birthday on facebook who had passed away last year and i thought--what does happen to all these accounts? your friends and family probably wouldn't know where to start. it is absurd to think of all the blogs, facebook accounts, websites, etc...owned by...dead people...

Re: Legacy Locker: Pass On Your Digital Assets After You’ve Passed On

Lena — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 11:51:32 -0000

This kind of freaks me out.