So what happens when you die?

[Cliphead]

To all your accounts on sites such as this - forums, social networking sites, personal websites etc.

If mods aren't informed does your online personality live on? How long for? What mechanism can those left behind invoke to quietly close down what is no longer relevant? Are there legal implications or other hoops a family has to jump through to close down an account on Facebook say, trauma involved in tackling this process?

All those unanswered emails...

Just thinking like.

[Zippy]

You live on for a bit, but most accounts are deactivated if you don't use them for a while.

[Paddy]

To all your accounts on sites such as this - forums, social networking sites, personal websites etc.

If mods aren't informed does your online personality live on? How long for? What mechanism can those left behind invoke to quietly close down what is no longer relevant? Are there legal implications or other hoops a family has to jump through to close down an account on Facebook say, trauma involved in tackling this process?

All those unanswered emails...

Just thinking like.

Sadly a friend who made a very interesting website with his family history expired after he died as no provision for payment was made nor could anyone access his website account.

[cojak]

And if notified the regulars might organise a whip-round for a

(RIP Fleety...)

[mudskipper]

I guess it depends if it's sudden, or expected. I'd like to think someone would update my facebook status to "is dead" if I were to shuffle off. I guess one needs a trusted friend to give passwords to in a sealed envelope.

I had a friend who was terrified of dying in case her very staid mother found her handcuffs in her bedside table drawer.

[TimberWolf]

You live on for a bit...

One could live on after death for some time with suitably written scripts and paid up subscriptions. We are perhaps the first generation able to do this, unless writers, actors and other famous figures are included, who aren't known for submitting new stuff. Some on here could be simulated with no more than a few lines of code.

[Cliphead]

One could live on after death for some time with suitably written scripts and paid up subscriptions. We are perhaps the first generation able to do this, unless writers, actors and other famous figures are included, who aren't known for submitting new stuff. Some on here could be simulated with no more than a few lines of code.

That had ocurred to me as well. Also perhaps making provision in a will with login credentials to tidy up the loose ends so to speak.

The first generation to have to think about this indeed.

[Paddy]

One could live on after death for some time with suitably written scripts and paid up subscriptions. We are perhaps the first generation able to do this, unless writers, actors and other famous figures are included, who aren't known for submitting new stuff. Some on here could be simulated with no more than a few lines of code.

I though about doing a coffin cam when I die. I could even add some pre recorded twitching to be be added at random.

[TimberWolf]

I guess it depends if it's sudden, or expected. I'd like to think someone would update my facebook status to "is dead" if I were to shuffle off. I guess one needs a trusted friend to give passwords to in a sealed envelope.

I had a friend who was terrified of dying in case her very staid mother found her handcuffs in her bedside table drawer.

"friend"

[NickFitz]

Stuff on the web may or may not be archived by the Wayback Machine at archive.org - it tends to do a better job with content that remains static once created rather than things like Facebook walls that change from day to day.

As for how long one remains an entity on somewhere like CUK: we know about the tragic demise of Fleetwood, but there have almost certainly been other regular posters who have stopped posting for the worst of all possible reasons. There's nothing here that would disable their accounts after prolonged inactivity, although I'm sure admin would close an account to further posting if requested to do so, and if satisfied that it was a genuine request.

As far as Facebook is concerned, they have special procedures in place: a dead person's account can either be removed or "memorialized". AIUI, removal involves deleting the person's content; memorialising is described at the relevant form:

IMPORTANT: Under penalty of perjury, this form is solely for the reporting of a deceased person to memorialise or remove the person’s account. Memorialising the account sets privacy so that only confirmed friends can see the profile or locate it in search. The Wall remains so that friends and family can leave posts in remembrance. Please note that unrelated inquiries through this form may not receive a response.

One site that I found to be dreadfully sad was the one that used a Google Map to show the locations in which people had died together with links to their MySpace pages. I'm not sure how these links were created but I think they were coming from those who knew the deceased. It was hard to see how else there could be a cross on the map, in some small town in the Mid West of the USA, that linked to both a news report of a woman who had died crashing her car whilst drunk, and to her MySpace page where her last post described looking forward to the party that night.

I was about ready to leave the site at that point, but morbid curiosity made me click on another random cross. It turned out to be for a seventeen year old girl and, when I followed the link to her MySpace page, I found that she had been struggling with cancer for over a year, and had posted about it all on there. In her last post, dated the day before her death, she said she was getting an early night because of the surgery the next day, and talked about the risks the surgery itself brought, the slender chance that it might heal her, and her acceptance of the fact that even if it went well it might still not lead to remission. She also sent messages to her friends. I wept.