LebGeeks

mir

Member

the passing of online belongings

I was just thinking about this

after you die...specially if u die suddenly, how can they make a Jardeh of your online belongings, wich some of them may be quite valuable nowaday ( i am talking blogs, galleries, flickr accounts, websites and all sorts of accounts and logins ............)

and are those belonging passed thru a will ?
how is the recovering of password gonna happen ? would eventually gmail or  wordpress for example give the log in information?

and there is also for example laptop username/password
as a developper most of my work or "ra2smel" is in those binary values, only protected by a log in
can for example your family request from someone the cracking of those passwords ?

I am just curious what happens... specially that there is no way to really know what someone "owns" online.

-- i am not talkin only in leb.. but worldwide as well.. since here our gov. is so well far away in those matters

Last edited by mir (November 11 2008)

Padre

Member

Re: the passing of online belongings

lol, where do you dig up such ideas ? :rolleyes:
are you sure u have a job and actually working ??

mir

Member

Re: the passing of online belongings

* feels hurt *
i am a hard working, fast typing, query writing , report generating, database designing lady !
and it doesn't interfer with me being a
web surfing, file downloading, funny blogging, facebook checking, msn chatting Geekette !

if computers can multi-task.. so can i ! .. i am a fully advanced human being !

well padre, I know my mind works in a funny way
i think it is the total opposite u should be wondering about
as they say in leb.. 3ala kitret l shegel, l wa7ad byekhraf and starts getting those ideas
besides, only ppl actually working in the IT/programming/networking/web/blogging/blalba field would get those kind of ideas  no ?

Back to topic
anyway.. any other crazy dude with ideas on the subject ?
i can really type in a long post about tatawor l bashariyeh.. how law eventually adapts and evolves as humanity.. and how most probably there must be a way to solve this thing..blablabla

Last edited by mir (November 11 2008)

BashLogic

Member

Re: the passing of online belongings

please proceed with your input, im going to be indulged today!

crazy

Member

Re: the passing of online belongings

hehe, that reminded me of a funny comics where one computer engineer died, and "le notaire" (the person in charge of the will:p) was reading the will for the widow: "... and 50mb of space on www.something.com.."

That is really something to be considered nowadays, like you say it mir, a lot of online belongings can have great material values, such as website like facebook or others. You can contact google, wordpress or other if you want to know if they have such policy regarding deceased subscriber, maybe they do:)
But I am sure, that legaly you can have someone crack a password if it was asked by the owner (even if it is in a will) it is like opening a safe at a bank (if it is in the will also)...

Someone else?

Padre

Member

Re: the passing of online belongings

yeah ... you just stay alive, and all will be well.
if ur dead ... it's not ur concern anymore ;)

mir

Member

Re: the passing of online belongings

Padre: well.. badna nwaret l wled  it is just like any other belongings, and haram some services/systems to just stop cuz stupid me died

well i guess as in the joke, one should write the passwords and username and include them in the will
can also put data on hdds, encrypted and all, make couple of copies and have it sent

the very geeky version would be to make an automatic system that sends a copy of files via email to your online friends after some period of inactivity, like this u make sure ur will is done

I guess there is no way to map the real person to the virtual person... and i am glad  , i hope google maslan doesn't give the email password, it violates privacy 
i think i read something on the subject... but not quite rememebering

samer

Admin

Re: the passing of online belongings

I've thought about it before. I think I'll leave some clues behind to the people I want to make them figure out some of my passwords. But it's kind of far-down in my To-Do list :)

battikh

Member

Re: the passing of online belongings

that's were digital certificates can get handy...
if you could login to your accounts with digital certificates, you just put them on a usb and leave it in the bank and when you die you give the usb and with your digital certificate people would have access to all your e-belongings

Last edited by battikh (November 15 2008)

karim

Member

Re: the passing of online belongings

Some article i found online, very interesting read...

I wrote an article about this topic, and have been trying to get it published for a while...

Here it is:

Death and Access
--

It is a precious few of us that ponder life’s only truly inevitable milestone - it’s end. And of the few there must be even fewer that think beyond the immediate needs of our families upon our untimely demise (is there such thing as a timely demise?).

The scene is typical in television dramas, a grieving the oldest son distributing the prized possessions of a beloved father recently passed away. The collection of fine paintings, bequeathed to William Jr., the rare books handed down to sister Elizabeth. But what of the iTunes collection? Will the blog be shut down? Can you bequeath these kinds of things?

Made for TV movies aside, informal observation reveals that and more of our most personal effects are less likely to be kept in a safe or a security deposit box, but instead take the form of digital assets like, emails, chat transcripts, research documents, multimedia files, and financial records.

The importance of these various digital sundries varies of course, from the mundane yet practical (car insurance renewal confirmation), to the amusing (self portraits with the digital camera), to highly personal items replete with sentimental value (personal emails). Regardless of their practical value, these items were part of someone’s life, and should be treated with the same care and respect that their physical photo album would be given.

The recent rise in a viable marketplace for digital assets also raises some interesting questions. An mp3 collection may potentially possess some sentimental value, but it also maybe potentially posses a very large monetary value. Assuming the purchase of one album or movie a week from the Apple’s iTunes Store, a person who had been purchasing music for 5 years would have amassed a collection worth approximately $2500. Upon their death, what happens to these files? Can ownership be transferred to a family member, or does the collection remain intact, but locked away in perpetual silence under a thin layer of DRM?

Similarly, in a world where we belong not only to the community that we live and work in, we increasingly belong to online communities that mirror in many ways the personal interactions and affiliations of the physical world. In the event of a community member’s death, what happens to their persona? One day they are posting their list of ten best foreign films or posting photos of their vintage typewriter collection, and the next day they are gone. Presumably their friends and family in the physical world (I’m avoiding the word “real”, which implies a lesser experience online) will have knowledge of their passing, and begin the grieving process, but in their online worlds has the person simply disappeared? In case of prominent community members, the online community at large may know their real name and begin a search for them via traditional channels, but many community members remain essentially anonymous and their sudden disappearance leaves many questions unanswered. Would the deceased want the community notified? Is there a final message for them? Should email accounts be closed down, or left active, set to bounce the email back to the sender with a startling, yet informative message?

Are there any practical answers, or are our digital existences destined to a life in limbo when our bodies have been laid to rest? I would suggest the following steps to ensure that your preferences are respected.

1. Take an accounting of all your digital assets and online accounts, note any applicable logins and passwords.
2. Decide who you’d like to have access to these things
3. Decide what you’d like done with them after you have died. Deleted, updated, shared, etc...

Once you have decided these things, you can proceed in a few ways. First, you can draft a physical document, which could be appended to your will. This document could specify the particulars of the three steps above, but more importantly, it could name a digital executor that would be responsible for carrying out your instructions. This individual should be both technically competent and trustworthy, as you will be granting them access to your digital world in absentia. Your instructions to them could be as simple as shutting down all accounts, and erasing your hard drive, or it could detail which email folders were shared with whom, and which photos be made available on Flickr as a final goodbye.

Another route would be to leverage technology to achieve the same result without the need for a lawyer’s involvement. Deathswitch.com is a web site that offers a service they describe as “Information Insurance”. It works as follows: One enters their list of desired contacts along with their email addresses, then they create a message containing the kind of account information discussed above. Next, a time interval is set, it could be once a day, it could be once a year. If the user does not log into the site, indicating that they are alive, the system will automatically send out their message to the entire list of people on their list. I cannot vouch for the security or functionality of this service (now that I think about it, can anyone???) which costs $20 a year to maintain, but in theory it is a practical approach to the dilemma of sharing information in the case of an unexpected (or perhaps expected) death with friends, family, and co-workers, all of which can receive custom messages. Just don’t forget to log in, or you, very much alive, may find yourself having to explain why half of your work email consists of fantasy baseball updates and why the password to your Facebook account is “unicornprincess”.

Regardless of the approach you take to safeguarding the future of your digital life, it is important that you give some thought to it. Get organized, make a plan, and then live your life to the fullest, knowing that your digital afterlife is safe and sound.

Oh and considering the inactivity detection service, check out http://www.deathswitch.com/ (:

rolf

Member

Re: the passing of online belongings

Its good but they should have thought about ways to make sure that the person is dead. I mean the guy may have been gone on a 1 year vacation and forgotten everything about this service... or his account migh be flooded by junk... Its easy to forget this stuff because nobody wants to be constantly reminded that they'll die some day.
And when he comes back he'll find out that all his bank account numbers are given away, that his mail is public, some friends crying... and god know what more... maybe his wife divorcing because she found out evidence of some affair in his personal stuff...
I think it is not asking too much from these people to have some phone operator that would give out phone calls in the event that the user does not respond to "lifechecks", just to make sure whether the person is really dead or not.