If you publish something on your own website or on an Internet service where you have full responsibility for content and presentation, did you think about what would happen to all that should you die? Have you made arrangements for your Yahoo and Hotmail accounts after your death? What about your social network accounts like Facebook, MySpace and Twitter?
Nobody is immortal. You can live on for many years or die in a car accident today. One day or another, our time will come.
Do you want your website to go on after your death, perhaps with a death notice? Your blog could be of great interest to your grandchildren. Then again, when readers know you’re dead, they’ll stop visiting anyway. Do you want everything to stop immediately or a few weeks down the road?
Whatever your choice, you will need a trustworthy service or person who can handle that aspect. He, she or it must have clear instructions and all your usernames and passwords, as well as the names and addresses of partners picked up along the way for your blog or service.
The password is probably the most important issue. Check out a site called Dead Man's Switch. This is automated service sends messages and waits for your reply. If the message remains unanswered for several days, the service notifies a person whose name and contact information you provided so that person can take whatever measures were planned.
A Gmail account stays open forever unless next-of-kin ask for its removal. If they want access to the account, they must provide information and documentation, including a death certificate. It might be easier to confide the username and password to someone you trust or reveal them in your will.
An inactive Hotmail account will be removed automatically. Until then, next-of-kin can be gain access to it by sending in information and documentation. At Yahoo, however, everything remains confidential. If you have not given your username and password to someone else, the most that can be asked for is deletion of the account.
Facebook will not allow anyone else to access the account, but once notified of your death by next-of-kin, it can turn it into a memorial page upon request. MySpace will delete the page upon request, but will not allow it to be modified or deleted in any other way.
Do you have a PayPal account with a few hundred dollars left over? It would be nice if your loved ones knew how to access them. If a subscription to a Web domain is to be renewed soon, it would be nice to know. Otherwise, the domain will be given to someone else.
Copyright law varies from one country and one region to another. In general, it may be possible to transfer your copyright to others. If copyright is left to the estate, there is no guarantee that your Web material will remain online.
You don’t have to put everything in your will. There could be a separate envelope in which you inform the executor of which material you want deleted from your computer before anyone else gets to see it.
Here are a few resources:
http://webmasterformat.com/blog/what-happens-to-your-website-if-you-die
http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/what-happens-to-your-email-and-social-networking-sites-when-you-die
http://menwithpens.ca/what-happens-to-your-website-if-you-die
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