Actually, my fiance has the password to my MacBook Pro and Dell systems. On those systems is an encrypted document with my death wishes.
If I die, she can login to either machine and open this document with a password that has an exact timeline of how to announce my death. On my primary blog (i have 5 of them) I have a draft created for my death ready to be published. Each of my social networks is to be changed to a specific photo of me, info and other things.
I have had this planned since I was 16 years old (22 now) so when I do pass my online name can be preserved as well.
just checking to make sure SEOAly did not get hit by a bus on her way home from work today!
IDoBlogs
· 1 year ago
Wow, now that's one of those things I'd never thought about before. Adam has the right idea - a e-will!
Andrew Feinberg
· 1 year ago
Sadly I have some early experience with this. Just under three years ago, a close friend from my undergraduate days passed away suddenly. His Facebook profile remains "frozen in time" save for a notice that he is no longer alive, and his sister maintains the profile.
Somehow it remains an online "gathering point" for his friends, who still post notes as if he were living. Silly? Perhaps. But his family has reached out to many of us in the intervening years, allowing us to share memories of our friend with them that they never would have otherwise know. They have gained an understanding of how much their son meant to the people around him.
Far from an online graveyard, in this sad situation social networks have helped my friend's family as well as other friends of his deal with a tragedy that like it or not, we are all united by.
Richard Mackney
· 1 year ago
This is something I have thought about before - not in a morbid way, but In a celebration of life way. I have had online profiles since my compuserve website in '96 - I would like to think that my children would be able to learn more about me from all my posts and profiles. It is interesting to think that they still may be available for eternity and as systems progress, old social networking profiles and posts may be refered to as we now use micro fiche to view publications from the past. The (British) TV program 'Who do you think you are' springs to mind, and I wonder how easy it is going to be in the future for generations to look back at their great great great grandads posts on twitter!
Nice thought provoking article, thank you.
@mackney
Merredith
· 1 year ago
This is a great post - thoughtful and honest. I have pondered this question a lot in the last year, mostly because I can't bring myself to delete the late Marc Orchant (@mochant on Twitter) from the social networks where we were connected. It sounds odd, but I like having him there -- and I like remembering him, wondering what he'd say about any given topic.
Ironically, his last posts were about trying to delete all traces of himself from FB in protest over Beacon -- but as you say, in cyberspace you can live on for quite a while whether or not you meant to. Maybe not every family would want a public place to grieve this way -- but the community and connections afforded by the Internet are generally very healing (minus trolls of course); maybe better that than "Error 404: File Not Found."
mikebrennan
· 1 year ago
I had a high school friend that died suddenly right before Christmas a few years ago. Her MySpace page is still a place where people go and post comments and remember her.
To the best of my knowledge her bf and family never took control of the account and just leave it be.
Matthew
· 1 year ago
Definitely makes me think about how I'm spending my time here. What if I were to become one of those profiles tomorrow? Am I wasting today? Now I'm REALLY going to go out and buy that camping trailer I've been looking at and take my wife and kids on a few trips. And write about it in some online places.
Philip John
· 1 year ago
This is something I have actually been thinking about recently. My sister would probably think to go on my Facebook but no-one else (not even friends) know what services like Twitter or FriendFeed are let alone that I have a presence there. To the online world I would simply disappear with no explanation.
I've thought about a living will for a long time and Adam's suggestion (although, yes, morbid) is a great one. I'm going to get working on that this weekend. After all, as Aly pointed out, I could get hit by a bus tomorrow!
@amaaanda
· 1 year ago
I hope nobody is classless enough to submit me to a MyDeathSpace type of place when I die. I have friends that have died in Iraq where their parents and/or family leave their MySpace up for people to grieve and whatnot. I feel like leaving them up makes them like a circus attraction. Take the things down already and let people move on.
Richard Mackney
· 1 year ago
I agree, 'the sounds of their voice' is quite a poignant thought. People are mentioning Myspace here, but more importantly we now have seesmic, 12seconds, twitter, QIK, even Youtube as bad a place as it has become. I have started to use Twitterfone and ... 'the sound of my voice' will hopefully live on ... that and all my stupid video's of me littered around the net! Good comments @mackney
Neal G
· 1 year ago
How about an even better question which I've thought about is what happens to my own website should I die? At the minimum somebody has to pay the bandwidth bill, but like facebook/myspace users, I'd like to see it at least live even if I'm not.
jrrrl
· 1 year ago
When I die, my Twitter account is going to be the least of my concerns.
Nancy
· 1 year ago
Adam Jackson's comments are hilarious. I bet his girlfriend organizes a funeral and doesn't bother with the rest. How burdensome it would be to spend all this time updating his many online profiles and following his "exact timeline" for announcements. Adam, stay alive.
Adam Jackson
· 1 year ago
You think they are hilarious? You think this is a joke? My death wishes are to be taken very serious. What's hilarious about completing my Internet persona and laying it to rest just as you would my dead body?
Is it a burden to pick the right casket, attire and wrapup my loose ends financially?
Is it a burden to call my immediate family notifying them of my death?
Is it a mother f***king burden to notify my 100 thousand unique visitors a month, 1200 twitter followers and nearly 2000 friends across social networks that I'm dead?
I hope someone gives a crap when you pass away and that it's not too much of a burden to make funeral preparations.
Richard Mackney
· 1 year ago
Adam, your honest post has made a lot of people think about an internet will and I think we may even see a web 2.0 startup forming just for that purpose. It's a great thought and something that we (being the social networkers) need to consider. don't bite @mackney
Sean
· 1 year ago
Fantastic article.
web 2.0 designer
· 1 year ago
We can put a family survey form for future use and create a nominee after death and it will up to on user wishes, so that somebody can re-open that a/c.
s1do
· 1 year ago
Los usuarios de MyDeathSpace no deben actualizar muy a menudo no? xD
Ajay Pathak
· 1 year ago
looks a really useful thought we must have to think what will happen when we die
web 2.0 designer
· 1 year ago
Interesting Idea! We can have nominee details along with account.
Christopher
· 1 year ago
DONT TOUCH MY PROFILES =D i like my profiles to be (in your words) "ghostly" =]
Nobody in the world knows my passwords and i like it to stay that way. with the way the world is these days its a bad idea writing your passwords down, telling peaple your passwords ect.
Bloggeries
· 1 year ago
I think they should just stay the way they are. I wouldn't want my family logging into my profiles. I believe many families will want them left the way they were the last time it was updated. This is similar to how many families that can afford to do so often leave their son or daughters room the way it was the last time they ever left...
Sad topic but a reality.
bobstewart
· 9 months ago
We are in the process of launching a service for this over at www.VitalLock.com stop by while you still can!
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.
amber
· 3 months ago
i somehow got here after reading some goofy yahoo answers thing on failblog.org
but i have to say this: i don't know if technically it's a help with the greiving process, but it seems to be for a lot of people. my brother died at the beginning of this summer (june eighth) and my sister and i have kept up with his myspace, etc. since then. logging in occasionally to upload other pictures of him that we had, and many of our friends and his have left him comments since his death....personally i've probably left a couple, and in almost everyone i say "i know leaving this is pointless" but i don't know....still seems like in some way you're still close to them.
we haven't changed anything on his profile except his default picture and the "tag line" thing....everything else is the way he left it.
don't know why i even left this either, but thought it was on topic....
All Comments
If I die, she can login to either machine and open this document with a password that has an exact timeline of how to announce my death. On my primary blog (i have 5 of them) I have a draft created for my death ready to be published. Each of my social networks is to be changed to a specific photo of me, info and other things.
I have had this planned since I was 16 years old (22 now) so when I do pass my online name can be preserved as well.
Somehow it remains an online "gathering point" for his friends, who still post notes as if he were living. Silly? Perhaps. But his family has reached out to many of us in the intervening years, allowing us to share memories of our friend with them that they never would have otherwise know. They have gained an understanding of how much their son meant to the people around him.
Far from an online graveyard, in this sad situation social networks have helped my friend's family as well as other friends of his deal with a tragedy that like it or not, we are all united by.
Nice thought provoking article, thank you.
@mackney
Ironically, his last posts were about trying to delete all traces of himself from FB in protest over Beacon -- but as you say, in cyberspace you can live on for quite a while whether or not you meant to. Maybe not every family would want a public place to grieve this way -- but the community and connections afforded by the Internet are generally very healing (minus trolls of course); maybe better that than "Error 404: File Not Found."
To the best of my knowledge her bf and family never took control of the account and just leave it be.
I've thought about a living will for a long time and Adam's suggestion (although, yes, morbid) is a great one. I'm going to get working on that this weekend. After all, as Aly pointed out, I could get hit by a bus tomorrow!
Good comments
@mackney
Is it a burden to pick the right casket, attire and wrapup my loose ends financially?
Is it a burden to call my immediate family notifying them of my death?
Is it a mother f***king burden to notify my 100 thousand unique visitors a month, 1200 twitter followers and nearly 2000 friends across social networks that I'm dead?
I hope someone gives a crap when you pass away and that it's not too much of a burden to make funeral preparations.
don't bite
@mackney
we must have to think what will happen when we die
We can have nominee details along with account.
i like my profiles to be (in your words) "ghostly"
=]
Nobody in the world knows my passwords and i like it to stay that way. with the way the world is these days its a bad idea writing your passwords down, telling peaple your passwords ect.
Sad topic but a reality.
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.
but i have to say this:
i don't know if technically it's a help with the greiving process, but it seems to be for a lot of people. my brother died at the beginning of this summer (june eighth) and my sister and i have kept up with his myspace, etc. since then. logging in occasionally to upload other pictures of him that we had, and many of our friends and his have left him comments since his death....personally i've probably left a couple, and in almost everyone i say "i know leaving this is pointless" but i don't know....still seems like in some way you're still close to them.
we haven't changed anything on his profile except his default picture and the "tag line" thing....everything else is the way he left it.
don't know why i even left this either, but thought it was on topic....