Everything!Facebook, ohotosharing site, online banking… it’s more than sketchy virtual “yous” We use the internet now very differently than when it first began. Though it is a place to have “fun” it is also a place where you conduct your life (banking). That is why I’m calling everything we do on the internet part of a your virtual identity.
Unfortunately, some of us may have knowledge of fb’smemorialization of profiles, but other than that, do you know what by law online communities are required to do with your login and any information you’ve added to their system?
People very much own a wide variety property in the cyber world. The next great American novel may be written on GoogleDocs and backed up to Mozy. Gamers own property and make money in and from their digital worlds. Some of this money transfer is an in-game transfer (transfers of virtual money) and some of the money transfers are real money transfers, an actual exchange of real money. In games you can win prizes, real and virtual. A user can own credits in a particular web community. For example, Facebook credits are used to purchase gifts or games. In SecondLife, the official currency “Linden Dollars” can be used to purchase virtual goods ranging from avatars to clothing.Linden Dollars are bought by real dollars, and can be exchanged back into real money as well. The extent to which we own digital property is endless. Although, my virtual self may be able to tell me one day that I don’t own her.
Because our identities are accessed through, in theory, secret passwords, the virtual identities of users exist in limbo when the user dies. For people who now live their lives online it may be terrifying to think that they will disappear when they die.
It is only recently that a few online services have established procedures to handle deceased users. Most generally, any online service that has a “deceased user policy,” requires proof of the user’s death before any action is taken. And, for those services that have no “deceased user policy,” it seems that user accounts will remain untouched. This aligns with how property is dealt with in the real world: when a person dies their house isn’t immediately demolished. But, everything virtual is quite erasable, so there may be undiscovered policies out there that atomically delete a user’s information upon learning of the user’s death. This could be for many reasons, simple house cleaning, limiting liability, or keeping a “tight ship”.
Without a deceased user policy, which accounts for almost all online services, the Terms of Service would guide us. But, most ToSs don’t cover deceased users. So, for right now – nothing happens when you die. Your account is neither deleted or locked up.This is probably an unstable system that will likely lead to law suits for unauthorized access of accounts… or law suits against deceased user’s estates. If I give my husband my passwords to my accounts (as I do) if he accessed the accounts when (heave forbid) I die… is that authorized? Some argue no. In an age where cyber bullying is sadly getting worse and occuring more often – it doesn’t seem far fetched that people could (or should) be liable for cyberbullying after they die. What if I made my virtual self say bad things about one you? It would be there, forever. And if you didn’t find out about it until after I died, who do you bring suit against to take them down? It’s not like a virtual you could beat up my virtual me. The current reccomendation is to simply plan for your death, and how to dispose of your virtual identity in your will.Not the best solution… you have to identify your virtual assets, then plan to dispose of them.
