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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: "

12 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 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. 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?

  4. 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.

  5. 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?
  6. 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}