My Digital FootPrint

Image from Memorial.gov.hk Grieving families are being left out of pocket because people are forgetting to include passwords to their digital assets in their wills, according to a new study entitled  Dying in a Digital Age . Commissioned by Remember a Charity, the research found that 80 per cent of people own digital assets, but only nine per cent have thought about passing them on when they die. The study, which polled 2,000 people, found that: – over half of respondents (56 per cent) said they have a digital music collection, with 45 per cent valuing it at over £100 and 10 per cent at over £1,000. – A third of people own smartphone apps (34 per cent) with 20 per cent saying their collections are worth over £100. To help people plan how to pass on their digital assets, Remember a Charity has produced a checklist that can be downloaded from its  web site . ----- If you want to join in the debate on this topic there is http://digitaldeathday.com/ and is run by my NA fr...

  Not a new topic for this blog - previous posts are here http://blog.mydigitalfootprint.com/tag/death   A very good article appeared from the New York Times By  ROB WALKER Published: January 5, 2011 using the Photo Illustration by Penelope Umbrico above ‘‘Sunset Portraits, From 8,462,359 Sunset Pictures on Flickr, 12/21/10’’  I am not repeating it or doing a summary as it worth spending 15 minutes and reading it. There are also 83 comments which capture a hugh range of opinion Read All Comments (83) »     Things to adds from me....as so many good point have been made already   Payments - who is responsible for paying for services to keep them alive, you cannot pass on liability. 30% bother to sort wills - 70% don't - the Internet stats are likely to be worse given our attitude to backup Signing rights that are not aligned to terms and conditions is not a proposition that will work - what you want has to aligned to what...

    http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/18/technology/18death.html This is a difficult topic, how do we deal with accounts of users who die.  Who’s owns their IPR, should you login and delete the account.  I have written serval times about legacy and death, but as I am writing some ‘new’ social rules for our digital age and this one is very hard and any ideas would be welcome.  

  Changing name may be only way to escape previous online activity reports Carrie-Ann Skinner of PC Advisor “Young web users may be need to change their names when they become adults in a bid to distance themselves from content previously posted online about them” Google CEO Eric Schmidt told the Wall Street Journal: "I don't believe society understands what happens when everything is available, knowable and recorded by everyone all the time." "I mean we really have to think about these things as a society. I'm not even talking about the really terrible stuff, terrorism and access to evil things." Schmidt also told the newspaper the search engine is "trying to figure out what the future of search is". "I mean that in a positive way. We're still happy to be in search, believe me. But one idea is that more and more searches are done on your behalf without you needing to type." He says that at present "we know roughly who you are, ...

  Changing name may be only way to escape previous online activity reports Carrie-Ann Skinner of PC Advisor “Young web users may be need to change their names when they become adults in a bid to distance themselves from content previously posted online about them” Google CEO Eric Schmidt told the Wall Street Journal: "I don't believe society understands what happens when everything is available, knowable and recorded by everyone all the time." "I mean we really have to think about these things as a society. I'm not even talking about the really terrible stuff, terrorism and access to evil things." Schmidt also told the newspaper the search engine is "trying to figure out what the future of search is". "I mean that in a positive way. We're still happy to be in search, believe me. But one idea is that more and more searches are done on your behalf without you needing to type." He says that at present "we know roughly who you are, ...

  Changing name may be only way to escape previous online activity reports Carrie-Ann Skinner of PC Advisor “Young web users may be need to change their names when they become adults in a bid to distance themselves from content previously posted online about them” Google CEO Eric Schmidt told the Wall Street Journal: "I don't believe society understands what happens when everything is available, knowable and recorded by everyone all the time." "I mean we really have to think about these things as a society. I'm not even talking about the really terrible stuff, terrorism and access to evil things." Schmidt also told the newspaper the search engine is "trying to figure out what the future of search is". "I mean that in a positive way. We're still happy to be in search, believe me. But one idea is that more and more searches are done on your behalf without you needing to type." He says that at present "we know roughly who you are, ...

Although we produce and author digital content, we do not seem to have complete ownership of it and this problem of lack of ownership occurs at several points when we want to, or someone else needs to, gain access or control over it, these being abuse, historic and death. Abuse – when our information/ ID is stolen or taken out of context History – it doesn’t become history, it remains current but we need it to fade and become less relevant (prevalent) Death – gaining control to be able to switch off and archive.

Tending to Your Digital Remains is a dead interesting post on a topic I have asked the same question about – what happens when you die. First you need to make sure you hand on the keys (passwords) At least three companies — AssetLock.net , Legacy Locker , and the charmingly named Deathswitch.com — have arisen to keep customers’ passwords, usernames, final messages, and so on in a virtual safe-deposit box. After you’re gone, these companies carry out last wishes, alert friends, give account access to various designated beneficiaries, and generally parse out and pass on your online assets. Digital remains that are not bequeathed to an inheritor are incinerated, closing the book on PayPal accounts, profiles, even alternate identities ( especially alternate identities: You don’t want your mother knowing about, or worse, playing, the wife-swapping giant badger you became in Second Life). A second post on the same topic is Logging out after snuffing ou...

Tending to Your Digital Remains is a dead interesting post on a topic I have asked the same question about – what happens when you die. First you need to make sure you hand on the keys (passwords) At least three companies — AssetLock.net , Legacy Locker , and the charmingly named Deathswitch.com — have arisen to keep customers’ passwords, usernames, final messages, and so on in a virtual safe-deposit box. After you’re gone, these companies carry out last wishes, alert friends, give account access to various designated beneficiaries, and generally parse out and pass on your online assets. Digital remains that are not bequeathed to an inheritor are incinerated, closing the book on PayPal accounts, profiles, even alternate identities ( especially alternate identities: You don’t want your mother knowing about, or worse, playing, the wife-swapping giant badger you became in Second Life). A second post on the same topic is Logging out after snuffing ou...