Dying in the digital age presents challenges managing - Oregon Live

Death policies of major Web companies

Facebook: When Facebook is notified of a user death, they "memorialize" the account, making it visible only to friends, and preventing it from appearing on the "friend suggestion" bar. Family and friends can leave remembrance posts, but nobody can access the account to update it. Facebook will delete accounts at the family's request, but won't grant access. Twitter: Twitter will deactivate deceased users' accounts when provided with all of the following: The dead person's username, a copy of the death certificate, a copy of the ID of the person requesting the deletion, and a signed, notarized statement including the requester's name, contact information and relationship to the deceased. Twitter will not grant family members access to the deceased person's account. Google: "In rare cases we may be able to provide the Gmail account content to an authorized representative of the deceased," the policy states, adding that "the application to obtain email content is a lengthy process" and could be denied. To petition for access, the trustee must supply: Their full name, mailing address, email address, a copy of their ID, the Gmail address of the deceased, a death certificate, the entire contents of a Gmail message from the deceased to the person requesting email access. If Google approves this first step, the requester must go through a second step that could require a court order for the account's contents. LinkedIn: Friends or family can request a deceased user's account be closed by filling out a "Verification of Death Form" on the LinkedIn site. Yahoo: The site's user agreement states that upon death, a trustee can submit a copy of the death certificate to request deletion of the account, but cannot obtain access to the account contents.

--Kelly House

Most people assume that a family member or another designee will handle our physical belongings and liquid assets when we die. But what about our online affairs?

Who will respond to important emails, pay our online bills and deactivate our Facebook account so it stops notifying friends every time a birthday comes around?

In the Internet age, our online legacy lives on after our deaths. It presents problems for technology companies and their customers, who might not have considered their online afterlife until they experienced complications when a friend or family member died, leaving their Internet presence alive and unattended.

This new facet of the death-planning process is garnering attention from the Oregon State Bar, which has drafted legislation to grant family members access to deceased relatives' virtual assets.

"The world has evolved into a digital world, and to fairly administer someone's estate when they die, we're going to have to have a process to get access," says Michael Walker, a Portland estate attorney who helped craft the proposal.

But the proposal probably won't come to a vote until early next year, Walker says.

Until then, relatives and online companies are left to wrangle over the details. Often, family members want passwords for personal reasons such as saving family photos stored on Picasa or Flickr, financial reasons such as paying paperless bills, or clerical reasons such as responding to important emails or deleting the person's LinkedIn account.

Companies typically push back, erring on the side of user privacy. They're upholding a commitment to the customer and avoiding legal pitfalls, but in the process they've invited lawsuits from people who want access to their family member's accounts.

Karen Williams, a Beaverton schoolteacher, sued Facebook after the company blocked her access to her son's account following his 2005 death in a motorcycle crash. After a two-year legal battle, Facebook granted her 10 months of access before shutting down the account.

Similar suits have taken place in other states.

Virtual assets
Virtual assets can include everything from your passwords for Facebook, Twitter and email accounts, to your password-protected computer files and even home security systems. (See the box for a sampling of after-death privacy policies for some popular Internet sites.)

Were you to die tomorrow, many of them would never cross your family's mind. But with the increasingly common practice of conducting business online, many of us have bank accounts, retirement savings plans, bill payment and other money matters hidden behind a username and password.

Eve Callahan, a spokeswoman for Umpqua Bank, says the company closes dead customers' online accounts when the family submits proof of death.

But with no online bank account for bill collectors to draw from, unpaid e-bills could pile up. The family might never know if they didn't have access to the deceased's email account -- and they likely wouldn't, because most email providers refuse to provide dead relatives' passwords.

"The family members have no way of accessing those assets," Walker says.

That's where the draft Oregon legislation comes in.

In the meantime
There are ways to ensure your online affairs are handled to your liking after death.

Ted Simpson, a Portland estate lawyer, began urging his clients to fill out a nonbinding instruction sheet after two incidents three years ago brought the issue of the online afterlife to his attention.

First, a family sought Simpson's advice after a murdered relative's Facebook friends began posting derogatory statements on the relative's profile page. Because Facebook doesn't grant families access to deceased relatives' pages, the family had no way to delete the posts. Simpson realized he didn't have the answers, either.

A short time later, another client sought Simpson's help in getting access to a relative's email, where paperless bills were piling up.

"It comes up all the time," Simpson says. "Until the law catches up with this area, we've just been doing instruction letters."

Simpson advises clients to direct the letters (here's an example from Walker's firm) to a trusted contact. They should contain the usernames and passwords for all online accounts, with specific instructions for how the trustee should handle the accounts after the client's death. Often, he says, clients leave different instructions for various accounts. They might want the designee to respond to unopened emails, then close the account. Sometimes, they leave instructions regarding pieces of an account.

"Take, for instance, your Picasa account," Simpson says. "You may have a folder marked 'family pictures' and one marked 'Vegas.' You may instruct your personal representative to download the family pictures to CD and delete the folder that's marked 'Vegas.'"

Several companies have capitalized on families' difficulty gaining access to digital assets after a family member's death by promising to maintain your usernames and passwords, then deliver them to family members upon confirmation of your death.

Some lawyers caution against these password warehouses, saying it's risky to store such sensitive information online and cautioning that if the business goes under, passwords will be lost.

Collin Harris, owner of the Nevada-based AssetLock.net password warehouse, says the idea arose after his father died in 2000, leaving behind no will and investments his father had never mentioned. It was a rude awakening for the family, who never considered their father's digital life.

"If the proverbial meteor hits you in the head today, who else knows all the little things about you?" Harris says. "Most people just have no idea. Who knows what we missed out there that he never told us about?"

-- Kelly House

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