7 Ways to Handle Digital Life After Death

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    • MashDeathPOV.jpgDeath is a fact of life. When someone dies, they’re no longer physically here, but their digital self lives on. There are over 5 million accounts on Facebook that are inactive due to
    death, according to the calculations
    of BlackBook Media’s Executive Editor Chris Mohney. And that’s just
    Facebook. Think about all of the other social sites and online services
    out there – the number of abandoned accounts due to death must be
    enormous.

    After someone passes away, their digital assets live on in the form of computer files and data online. For some, that’s not a big deal. But for others, the thought of leaving digital assets unattended for eternity after death is unthinkable. Luckily, there are a number of services that allow you to delete, update, or transfer account information after you – or someone you care about – is gone.

    Here are seven services that help manage a digital life after death. If you’ve heard of other services that also handle these services, add your thoughts in the comments below.

    1. Entrustet



    Entrustet is a free service that enables an account holder to pass on digital assets to up to 10 designated heirs and one executor, who is in charge or executing a person’s digital wishes, after they pass away. Digital assets include social networks, financial accounts, blogs, e-mails and other Internet properties or files.

    Check out the video above, in which Rocketboom Tech‘s Ellie Rountree interviews Jesse Davis, co-founder of Entrustet, about how the service works and why it is important.

    2. Legacy Locker

    legacy locker.jpg
    Legacy Locker was one of the first services to be offered in this arena and is a trusted service for transferring access to digital assets, including e-mail, social media, and blogging accounts, to trusted sources.

    Legacy Locker offers three pricing plans, starting with a free account that includes storage of information for three digital assets, one beneficiary and one legacy letter, which acts as a digital goodbye note sent after death. If the basic, free service isn’t enough, there’s also the $29.99 per year plan or the $299.99 one-time fee plan, which both allow for unlimited assets, beneficiaries and legacy letters, as well as document backup and video upload.

    3. My Webwill

    My Webwill ensures that a trusted person can change or transfer someone’s online accounts, including Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, LinkedIn, Tumblr, YouTube, and more, after a death. Choose the desired settings for each account and choose two “trusted verifiers” to confirm the death, and upon notification of that person’s passing, My Webwill performs the deceased person’s wishes.

    4. Futuris.tk


    Future.tk is a social network with an online messaging service that lets anyone schedule messages up to 50 years in advance. Using the free post-mortem feature, it can also schedule messages to be sent to recipients after a death. To use this feature, the sender must select trusted sources to notify Futuris.tk of their passing, after which your messages can be sent.

    Because it offers unlimited messages for free, Futuris.tk is ideal for people who might have a lot of unfinished business to tie up with friends and family after death – or for someone who wants to send many personalized messages.

    5. Deathswitch

    deathswitch.jpg
    Deathswitch is a service that periodically prompts the account holder to provide a pre-determined password to ensure they’re still alive. If that person doesn’t enter a password on multiple occasions for a period of time, it deduces that the person is either dead or critically injured and begins sending out personalized pre-written messages to chosen contacts.

    The service can be used in many ways, but according to the site, some of the more common uses include sending passwords, financial information, final wishes, last words, love notes, and funeral instructions.

    With a free subscription, you can create one message to be emailed to one recipient. Or for $19.95 per year, you can prepare up to 30 messages with file attachments for up to 10 recipients per message. Like Futuris.tk, this is a great option for sending out bulk messages, except in this case you have to shell out for the service. You do, however, get the extra benefit of adding file attachments, such as photos and videos.

    6. GreatGoodbye

    greatgoodbye.jpg
    GreatGoodbye is a service that enables an account holder to schedule e-mails to loved ones, which can only be triggered once an activation code is entered by a trusted source. Once you prepare your e-mails, which can include videos, photos and MP3s for a price, your activation code is sent and should be passed along to a trusted friend.

    The service offers three pricing plans – a free plan that only includes one e-mail or the $20 per year or $119 one-time fee plans that include unlimited messages with unlimited videos, photos and MP3s. All of the plans come with unlimited memory space that lasts for 20 years, data encryption, secure login, 21 days to block the sending of messages after a death notification and multiple levels of security.

    7. AssetLock

    assetlock.jpg
    AssetLock is a service that focuses on mass storage of important information that may be crucial for others to know after a death, including information on financials, estate planning, insurance policies account passwords, e-mails and final wishes and directives. It has the capacity to store letters to be sent after a death, as well.

    The great thing about AssetLock is that it is very customizable. For example, you can choose the number of “recipients” necessary to unlock an account. So, it you want at least five people to verify a death with the service before they unlock information, you can do that. Furthermore, you can also specify the time delay between an account being unlocked and the information being disseminated. 

    Pricing plans range from $9.95 per year to $239.95 for lifetime membership, depending on the amount of entries and storage space you require. Compare plans here and check out the demo for more information.

    [Top image courtesy of Jonathan Fuchs]

    ==========================================================================
    Founded in July 2005, Mashable is the world’s largest blog
    focused exclusively on Web 2.0 and Social Media news. With more than 15
    million monthly page views, Mashable is the most prolific blog reviewing
    new Web sites and services, publishing breaking news on what’s new on
    the web and offering social media resources and guides. Erica Swallow is an Assistant
    Editor at Mashable, working primarily on writing, editing and managing
    supported feature content, with a particular focus on business and
    marketing. Prior to joining Mashable, she managed the social media
    marketing strategy for The New York Times.

    Erica Swallow
    Erica Swallow
    Erica Swallow is an Assistant Editor at Mashable, working primarily on writing, editing and managing supported feature content, with a particular focus on business and marketing. Prior to joining Mashable, she managed the social media marketing strategy for The New York Times. Erica is a graduate of New York University Stern School of Business with a Bachelor of Science in International Business and Marketing. While at NYU she also studied Mandarin Chinese, studied abroad in Shanghai, China, and co-founded NYU China Care, a club that raises funds for disabled Chinese orphans. When she’s not tweeting, tumbling and blogging, she enjoys the finer things in life: friends, food, wine, chocolate, traveling and dancing.

    Read More From Erica Swallow
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    • http://profile.typepad.com/anandramdeo Anand Ramdeo

      Thanks for this post. Discussion on death in the digital age and what happens to all the digital data and information we have is very much needed in the current time. On 9′Th Oct, there was an (un)conference in London on the same topic called – Digital death day conference. It was an interesting conference and you can find conference summary at http://blog.planneddeparture.com

      All the services you mentioned above and service we launched couple of days back (http://www.planneddeparture.com ) are trying to solve this puzzle of how to deal with the data after death. Hope posts like this will initiate discussion and increase awareness about this topic.

      Our focus on planned departure is ensuring that pain for the people we will leave behind eventually is reduced. We believe that insurance is one important aspect to ensure financial stabilities, but life needs more than that and Planned departure makes it easy to store digital assets which will be transferred to designated beneficiaries after the death of member. If your life is relatively simple and you need to store only few assets, you can even use our free account.

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