My Digital FootPrint

Image source: Associated Press Facebook  has changed its policies regarding profiles of users who have passed away. Feb 21 st 2014. A memorialized Facebook profile (when someone has died) was only visible to friends of the deceased, but now Facebook has altered its privacy settings on memorialized profiles so that all functions operate as they did when the user was active on the platform. For example, if a user kept his profile public to anyone on Facebook, that is the way his profile will be even after his passing. " This will allow people to see memorialized profiles in a manner consistent with the deceased person's expectations of privacy," members of Facebook's community team wrote in their blog. " We are respecting the choices a person made in life while giving their extended community of family and friends ongoing visibility to the same content they could always see ." The policy change involves "Look Back" videos, which wer...

I read this article and it got me thinking. What happens if we do make Delete the Default. The problem as I see it is that it all becomes too easy to forget history, too easy to have an opinion, too easy to not think and act, too easy to be individual above a citizen.  Accountability is surely valued higher than privacy? What happens when your medical history is deleted, your heart ECG, your previous test results. We value history every day, why do we want to loose it? Big difference is access to stuff you are not allowed to see. Personally because you want to protect your “chat” you cannot take the same principals and expand them to every situation – Delete cannot be the default.