In a lifetime we accumulate many assets movable (gold, cash, vehicles, etc) and immovable (house, land, etc). When people pass away unexpectedly there are laws that govern it with the various approaches. They are will-papers, power of attorney, joint custody, nominees, and many.

Assets can be in 3 categories:

• Personal Assets: your property, antiques, art, boats, coins, electronics, musical instruments, jewelry, precious metals, tapestries, vehicles, wine, and chattels in your house (e.g. furniture, curtains, gadgets, kitchen appliances)
• Investments: pensions, shares, bonds, trusts, cash, gold, and other real estates such as second homes
• Digital Assets: include your music, films, box sets, e-books, photos, cryptocurrencies, reward cards, vouchers, and business IP

In the last few decades, we have started accumulating another asset i.e. data: social media profiles, sim number, email ids, hobby pages, blog pages, online businesses, etc.

The digital assets can be categorized:

• Personal assets (email accounts, texts, social media profiles)
• Financial assets (online bank accounts, PayPal, cryptocurrency)
• Business (EBay, Spotify, customer orders)
• Intellectual property rights (domain names, images, and writing files on your computer)
• Loyalty program benefits
• Sports gambling accounts
• Online gaming accounts

When people die unexpectedly, their data floats on the internet world. This data is vulnerable and targeted. With so many unexpected deaths happening due to COVID, my memories went back 10years to explore this topic.

This article explores:

1. The journey of a loss and how I managed the data

2. How User Experience has influenced this data

3. What are the recent patterns/conversations?

The journey of a loss and how I handled the data in 2011

When my spouse passed away, apart from movable and immovable assets, he owned:

• A sim card which he used for 10 years: I started using his sim card so I do not lose valuable phone calls, messages, or any communication which was halfway. That number was associated with his voice and memories of the conversations with his friends until it changed later.
• Mobile phone: I retrieved his Gmail account from it. Many valuable conversations were retrieved. I requested the deletion of his account later.
• FB Profile memorialized but Linkedin and Twitter offered to delete which I didn't accept so they continue.
• Company email: The company gave me all personal data from his email id and I was not sure what to do with it. I scanned all emails of 10years and made sure, I did not miss any details. That data lies in a hard disk, packed up in his memory boxes.
• Yahoo account: I could not get the ownership of this and I tried hard
• His published poems with vendor website: They do not exist anymore, I have the screenshots though, but that website deleted his page.
• Domain names: He had few domain names, a common business to own and sell back then. I retrieved it from the companies and after a year did not renew it.
• GitHub account: I did not look much into that

For a nerdy guy like him, this list is still less, some were not even traceable. There are many other data that floats in the internet world even after 10years, memories shared by friends, photos, blogs, mentions, etc. Its imprinting life on a platform unknown that doesn't belong to dependants.

How UX has influenced this data?

I read one LinkedIn post of a dear connection where he grieved the loss of his friend and Linkedin’s inability to handle deceased profiles. In my case, I let it go and decided not to delete my husband’s profile but there are many stories floating on the internet. Today after 10 years in 2021, when I looked into policies how big social media giants have implemented, it has changed. Here are few examples of Facebook, Twitter, Google, and Linkedin. Every company has its own policies.

While Facebook and Instagram allow memorialization of the accounts of the deceased, Apple iCloud has policies with no access to the dependant's data, sources say. Twitter has added another persona: incapacitated user.

Digital assets have monetary value, inheritance taxes, memories, secured information, and this can be a nightmare in case of unexpected deaths explores one article!

What are the recent conversations/patterns?

• Many countries have to raise concerns and introduce laws governing the digital assets of the deceased. They say that there is no law governing digital assets and a legal definition for ‘digital assets’. There is much debate going around digital data and digital remains. Many law firms suggest individuals create a list of their digital prints.
• With many businesses going online and paperless, it will difficult to access records from someone’s cloud data, the law suggests. The laws governing this data are still under review. Few companies delete or completely restrict the cloud data of an individual.
• Research and experts say that it is morbid to think about our death but we need to plan for our digital data now. According to one researcher Yeslam Al-Saggaf, failing to think about these assets could have some serious consequences even after we die, such as “ID theft, fraud, damage to the reputation of the deceased person, crimes committed in the name of the deceased person, financial liabilities (loan in the name of the deceased person) and risks to the safety of the social network of the deceased person”.
• As I dig deep, we are creating an online avatar of ourselves on various servers and it acts like voodoo dolls. There are conversations about how do we even represent a person online visually who died. Strange but people are talking and we have nothing except ‘this profile is memorialized’. Do memorializing profiles add value to the company that displays deceased profiles except for their loved ones and followers?
• NSW, Australia has come up with laws. As per Indian laws of the Information Technology Act and Indian Succession Act, there is no solid conversation around protecting the digital assets of deceased members, unlike the USA. This discussion is still in a nascent stage.
• There are many apps and websites which capture this digital data and convert it into ‘audio and video’ profiles of the deceased, how do we put control on that? It’s a scary discussion to see dead profiles talking on your LinkedIn, FB, or Instagram pages. I wouldn’t want someone doing that to my near and dear ones who have passed away. There is no control on ethical issues on this. For example, various (often ironically short-lived) startups like Lifenaut aim to create a posthumous, interactive existence for the dead. Anyone who saw Black Mirror knows what I am talking about. This exposes a hole in the privacy laws of the data of the dead
• The physical death is one part but deleting the online account would be ‘second death’ — the moral status of digital remains.
• While this article shares some statistics for the Australian community. 83% of Australians who have a social media account have not discussed with their loved ones what they want to happen to their accounts when they die. Only 3% of Australians who have a Will have decided what to do with their social media accounts after their death.

This is just one part of the conversation. Handling the assets of the deceased with loved ones is a complex issue that takes time to resolve. I made few decisons in 2011 and I was unaware myself to handle it. My family didn’t question me when I handled the digital assets of him and I am not sure they even cared. The conversations around this are complex and may put a strain on relations hence we need to carefully handle it. Internet is moving at a fastest pace that has reached all corners of the globe. With Covid, people are coming more online.

Cheers, thank you for reading this far.