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Illinois Prof Calls for a Federal Law To Safeguard Digital Afterlives

Posted by timothy on from the you-don't-seem-to-be-using-this-account-any-more dept.

An anonymous reader writes "A new paper from Professor Jason Mazzone at the University of Illinois calls for federal laws to regulate what happens to digital accounts after the account holder's death. Mazzone argues that Facebook and other online services have policies for deceased users' accounts that do not adequately protect the individual property and privacy interests at stake. The full text of the paper (called "Facebook's Afterlife") is also available: "

19 of 82 comments (clear)

  1. the solution is autodeletion. by wierd_w · · Score: 3, Interesting

    And I mean, comprehensive deletion.

    Outside of nefarious uses, the information of a dead person is of no pactical value to facebook or its advertising customers. Dead people don't buy anything.

    As such, it is a cost center to retain the information of dead people. They should eliminate all such data, to keep a high relevancy with thir advertising customers, and avoid having stale and inaccurate data to sell.

    1. Re:the solution is autodeletion. by Anubis+IV · · Score: 4, Interesting

      And yet, grieving relatives are likely susceptible targets for all sorts of different advertising that can still be targeted at them based on inferred interests they may share with the deceased. Call me cynical, but I'm sure they can come up with plenty of business reasons for keeping around data on a deceased person. Not only that, but they need to ensure that there are adequate safeguards in place to prevent deletions from occurring prematurely, such as an ex using private information to signal that you are dead, otherwise they may open themselves up to all sorts of problems if they go around deleting user information.

    2. Re:the solution is autodeletion. by vux984 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Outside of nefarious uses, the information of a dead person is of no pactical value to facebook or its advertising customers. Dead people don't buy anything.

      But their shopping habits can still be used to predict what the living will buy.

      To me the bigger question is things like the ownership of games on steam, your magic the gathering online card collection, your MMO account, and so forth. These things have value, and the parasitic EULA's claiming you don't have ownership of anything while the main sites flog you to "buy! buy! buy!"notwithstanding its clear that the survivors will often have a very real interest in these things. My kids have characters on my MMO account. My entire family plays my steam games. I never got into MTGO precisely because of the ephemeral nature of the cards... but lots of other people do have valuable collections.

      If anything we should have laws to ensure this stuff does get passed to the survivors without hassle.

    3. Re:the solution is autodeletion. by jhoegl · · Score: 4, Insightful

      And since this is so obvious from a business standing, we don't really need any legislation to encourage it.

      Oh man, good joke.
      Just like when businesses used toxic chemicals to conduct their business and let it slide off into the creek/river.
      Just like when coal companies cleaned up the coal dust because it caused health issues and made cities look bad.
      Right... I trust businesses to do only one thing... keep their wallets fat so the little that we peons do get when it trickles down, makes us just happy we have a job.
      19th century here we come!

    4. Re:the solution is autodeletion. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      What he did was make use of analogies. In fact, if corporations are perfectly willing to do those things, I'm sure they'd be more than willing to commit lesser evils. There was no direct comparison anywhere.

      Well, that all depends on whether or not you think that this is an evil action, but that's not the point.

    5. Re:the solution is autodeletion. by Instine · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I can't tell you how important my late wife's facebook account is to me. It is betond money. I realize I'm not 'entitled' to it. And that one day it will die too. Maybe at the hands of a troll (they already hacked her twitter acc to do pharma spam). Or a data center outage. Or a change in policy. Whatever. Nothing is for ever.

      But for the time it is there, it is greater than any scrap book, photo album or other personal treasure. Neither of us care greatly about advertisers using the data. It is a detailed, personal record of the happiest time I'm ever likely to have. So deletion would not get my vote! If it were deleted I would certainly want to download a copy first. I know I'm not entitled to it, but again, it's what I'd want...

      --
      Because you can - or because you should?
  2. Here's my solution by damn_registrars · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I just don't put the only accessible copies of important files (even photographs and blog entries) in the hands of facebook, google, or anyone of the like. Files are on my own systems (including my own webserver). Why should I trust those other sites to act in my best interest, whether I am alive or not?

    --
    Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
    1. Re:Here's my solution by wierd_w · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Quite right. I do that too.

      (Ignore social networking, and run a local fileserver on a nonstandard port)

      Sadly, many ISPs, mine included, simply do not like the basic idea behind the internet, and are very displeased when they discoveer people with consmer accounts hosting servers, even puny ones with essentially no traffic, like mine. Many even actively attempt to frustrate such efforts.

      Such is the world it seems.

  3. There Ought to be a Law by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Why does everyone think there needs to be some Federal mandate regulating every single damn issue imaginable?

    The reason why we have so many big corporations with no competition is because the regulations prevent any new competition from coming in.

    The *last* thing we need is more Federal Laws!!!

    1. Re:There Ought to be a Law by sjames · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Probably because so many corporations would sell babies for dog food if there wasn't a law that says otherwise. There are many bad behaviors that at a personal level are covered by common decency but corporations are functionally sociopathic and only respond to laws. Then there's the people (many on /.) that for some reason think that's just fine.

    2. Re:There Ought to be a Law by tbird81 · · Score: 2

      Bullshit. They're not all Apple.

      Companies are run by people, they're led by people, and people decide what happens. If an arrogant sociopath runs a company stacked with members of his cult, a company may behave in a terrible manner.

      But Google doesn't have any laws stopping it from operating in China - it forgoes all that money out of principle of refusing censorship.
      Then there's the drug companies refusing to sell propofol to people for the death penalty.

      My boss takes a chance and hires some people who need a break. He acts ethically, and would not make money out of loopholes in funding systems.

      If a company acts in a sociopathic way, then we need to blame the people running them - they need to be held to account legally and ethically instead of excusing them by saying "corporations are functionally sociopathic" - only if we let them.

  4. No! by mosb1000 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I don't want my Facebook deleted in the event of my death! My friends would lose all of the photos I posted of them! And all the comments and links and everything I posted on their timelines. And what if they want to come back years later and reminisce about old times. There are lots of reasons living customers might want to look at the information. Wouldn't it be better to freeze the account?

  5. Death, pshaw. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Had a friend who commented heavily on my photos. We had a number of back and forth conversations.

    He then deleted his Facebook account because Facebook is clearly evil, and Google totally isn't.

    He's since come back to Facebook, and I've re-friended him, however:

    It still looks like I'm a freaking schizo, because half the comments on my photos appear to be me talking to myself.

  6. What is you friends disagree? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    "I don't want my Facebook deleted in the event of my death!"

    And if your friends don't want their photo kept after your death? What if they want to forget you? What if they want to move on? What would you have, a friends list and a dead friends list, and watch the dead friends list get longer and longer, and the friends list get shorter and shorter?

    Facebook: Bobby5765 had died, we've automatically moved him to the dead friends list.

    1 year later,

    Facebook: Bobby5765 died one year ago, why not come visit his page, he'd have liked that.

    2 months later
    Facebook: Was Bobby5765's using his real name?

    3 months later
    Facebook: Did Bobby5765 have any relatives? Why not connect with them by selecting them from his contacts list below.

    4 months later
    Facebook: Bobby5765's friends indicated you're his son, we're sorry for your loss, why not remember Bobby5765 by visiting old photographs of him.

    Moving on is important. What you want done with YOUR digital data after your death should be an account choice you make, not another data mining opportunity for Facebook. Default should be 'delete after 6 months'. Then your friends can archive anything they want on their site or computer.
    What I don't want to see, is Facebook milking dead relatives for marketing purposes.

    1. Re:What is you friends disagree? by Instine · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Then block it. Or stop using facebook. But it sure as hell won't be the only reminder. Or the 'worst'. I refer you to my earlier post on how precious a late loved one's FB account can be. FB could be smarter bout reminders, but I've found it by far the most considerate info holder of my wife's (in this respect). It allows you to register the profile as being of someone who has died, with very little fuss, many nice touches happened. E.g. She's still in my friends list, but if I start typing her first name in a post, it won't auto suggest it. This is a very nice touch indeed. Very considerate. Where as the local government might send me a form requiring her signiture to confirm she's no longer requiring service X. Srsly. Despite being told why we needed to cancel. And having multiple other similar notifications. She still gets more mail than me. Every day... So no, I don't agree with this.

      --
      Because you can - or because you should?
  7. Re:Do we need to make things harder? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    My mother died last year, and since she never told anyone her Facebook password, her account is still open.

    Personally, I'm glad Facebook hasn't auto-deleted it. Family and friends still post to her wall on holidays, and her birthday, etc. Of course, she will never see these messages, but it makes the rest of us happy to be able to leave these messages, and to be able to still read her posts.

    It's like a "gone, but not forgotten" type of thing.

  8. It's because of Facebook... by Kleen13 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    It was Facebook that really got my Mom into this whole "Computer thing". Since she passed, we have used her account as a hub for pictures, gatherings, and contacts. I see the point of eventually deleting her account, but it was surprising how many images and data that was singularly relevant to my family that was on her account that isn't recorded elsewhere... I would never have known the depth of her digital involvement if I didn't review her account. It's been priceless for my family. My two cents.

    --
    That sinking feeling deep in your gut when you KNOW you screwed up bad summed up with: {head desk} {head desk}
  9. So, what happens to my money in my Paypal account? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Paypal has gone to great lengths to not legally be a bank. At a bank, or brokerage firm, or other places that I park money in, they have all given me a form to declare a beneficiary. Does Paypal do that?

    Generally, in the State of California (and many/most? other states), unclaimed accounts in banks, ets, are turned over to the state. I found a few thousand dollars in insurance payments (I'm a doctoid), some going back 20 years.

    Also, once someone dies, bank accounts etc. are frozen (or should be) to new deposits. I once bought something on ebay, turned out to be defective. I tried contacting the seller; no response. (This was circa 2001-2, btw). A few months later I found the seller's address. So I wrote a nice complaint letter. Shortly after I received a refund from the seller's husband. He wife had died. She did a lot of ebay, and he had no idea how to use a computer.....

    Heck, my heirs may not even know I have a Paypal account, or care. Or an Amazon account, for sellers. $$ is disbursed to a checking account. What if the checking account is closed, and Amazon's disbursement gets bounced back?

    Okay, I know there are some /.-ers out there, the anti-government Libertarian, of which I feel some affinity too, who would say the worse evil is letting governments get their greedy hands on such funds. Except, I can imagine a situation in the corporations get to keep such fund in the event a person dies, maybe with an up front death benefit choice combined with a perk> you will get 0.5% more interest if you make Big Bank you beneficiary. But, Big Bank sends hit-men out on a few customers every now and then.

    I can also imagine a government doing that, just much less likely than a corporation doing it.

    end of rant

  10. Abide by the will by Mr_Plattz · · Score: 2

    I think the policy should confirm and enforce that all entities need to abide by the wishes of the deceased (without reason). I don't think we can simply come to a single standard act to {delete, freeze, publicitize} the information.

    Then, close the policy with clauses that outline in the event nothing is in the will, the information is available via common law practices (for example a spouse having access to a safety deposit box).

    If I want my account deleted, so be it. If I want it open to the public, so be it. If I want to hand over the keys to my social media account to my best friend to let him keep posting as me, then so be it.

    What I don't want is for my wishes to be for my wife to have access to all my information (Dropbox, KeePass safes, bank accounts) and her to be denied that access.