Digital legacy

This week has a been a bit of a whirlwind as I continue to travel across the USA, and the thing that has been on everyone’s mind this week has been the shooting of innocent movie goers in Denver, Colorado. If you’ve been living under a rock, The Dark Knight premiered on Friday last week and many people rushed to the theater to see it. In this instance, part way through the film, a man threw open the emergency exit and began randomly shooting into the audience at the theater, ultimately injuring over 50 people and killing 12 others.

There are more details on what actually transpired here, but for some reason this really hit home to me. Death can strike anytime, anywhere, and not how you really want it to happen. Don’t we all dream of growing old, falling in love and having a family? I know I do. But for those involved at this shooting (and many others before it), they may not have had the chance to experience life to it’s fullest. Isn’t life fragile?

I have spent the last few days pondering what actually happen in the event I or someone close to me died. What happens to all their physical stuff? Then I started thinking along an even creepier track; what happens to their virtual footprints? How do I feel about them remaining to be online? Would I want them to be a tribute to my life or would I rather them be taken down? So many questions, and yet so many out there probably don’t even consider these an issue. They are morbid questions.

The problem with online profiles, in my opinion, is that they portray an active life. A Twitter feed, no matter how out of date looks active and appears to have a person manning it. As does a Facebook, with a slew of photos and check-ins. I got caught on this notion because I noticed that in the shootings, a young woman by the name of Jess had died in the shootings.

What was eerie about this particular case was that she had actually had a near miss at a massacre in a Toronto mall late last year, and had written a blog about her near miss and how it had impacted her. I really urge you to read it, it’s pretty haunting. I then found her Twitter profile, @jessespector and just got a sick feeling in my stomach when I read her last tweet.

@jessespector MOVIE DOESN’T START FOR 20 MINUTES

Words can’t express the feeling of sadness I get browsing her feed. I know this is likely an extreme case here, but do I really want my words immortalized online like this when my time comes? I don’t think so. If you look at Jess’ feed, it feels like she’s so alive, and then it suddenly just stops. At this point I think I realized how fragile life really is. One minute we have it in the palm of our hand, and then another, someone (or something) can rip it away from us.

I then realized that I don’t want my profiles kept online if something were to happen to me. They portray a living being who shared the intimate details of their life with hundreds of others, unlike my parents who just have precious photos and rolls of film to share fleeting memories.

I began becoming curious about what options I do have, so did a little research into what could be done. Twitter was first on my list, and I found their policy pretty easily. In the event of a death, Twitter does not allow access to a profile and is able to deactivate it provided the person seeking the deactivation is actively willing to jump through a number of hoops that don’t seem too complicated.

Facebook is a bit more interesting. The first paragraph didn’t make me feel that great:

It is our policy to memorialize all deceased users’ accounts on the site. When an account is memorialized, only confirmed friends can see the profile (timeline) or locate it in Search.

Hmm, so can I have it deactivated, or can someone gain access to it? Not so sure I like that. Thankfully, further down the page it seems you can get rid of it:

Verified immediate family members may request the removal of a loved one’s account from the site.

I find it strange that the default option is to have the page memorialized. I don’t know if I want some sort of faux-shrine to live on forever with my face and name next to it. Will anyone even care? It’s just Facebook. I want my profile destroyed, not to display the tiny idiocies of my life. Also, Facebook doesn’t allow access to your data by anyone after you die, either. I actually have mixed feelings about this - I wouldn’t mind someone like Fem or my family accessing my data, but unless they already have the keys to the kingdom, they can’t get it.

Since I was already on a roll, I also checked out Gmail’s policies. They differ a little more because the information in there is not public in the first instance. Google says that they may let you in if you can prove the person has deceased but it is not guaranteed. You also need to obtain a court order to gain access, so you have to really want it.

All this information was wearying. It made me begin to wonder if it would even be worth someones time to deal with the ‘bio-digital jazz’ I had left behind. Then I realized a way to beat the system, if I wanted my accounts to be either accessed or destroyed. Just give out the passwords to someone I trust, then they can manually deactivate them. This does require a whole facet of trust, but could be done via a legal method like a will too.

Life is so fragile. It can be taken at any moment, either by our own stupidity or others’, and in an age of sharing and data vomit, do we really want to leave our mark on the world with meaningless status updates, or would we rather impact the people we love and through the things we love? I guess now is the time to decide.