What happens to your data after you die
 

Rant incoming

Lately I've been considering drafting a will although I'm relatively young and it's probably not necessary as all of my possessions would go to my parents / next of kin. But at some point it's going to be necessary.

I've been thinking about all the time I've spent on this site, playing rhythm games, and just video games in general. Sometimes I almost consider the "work" that I've put into these hobbies as accomplishments, things that I would like to leave a legacy behind even after I pass. It might be totally selfish, but as a guy who feels having children is totally not in the cards for me, it's been crossing my mind.

My thought is to make a clause within my will that states "person x" shall retain control of my computer hard drives, and also account credentials and data from x,y, and z websites. What they decide to do with this data is up to them but I think that not setting up a system like this could result in some really valuable information that would be lost to time.

Am I way off the mark here? It's just something I've been thinking about lately. (dw I don't plan on dying any time soon but you never know with my impulses and proclivity to take risks)

If there are any takers who would like to retain my digital assets after I pass let me know :P

Re: What happens to your data after you die
 

It's actually a reasonable thing to do and more people should do it. A lot of information and data is forcibly collected by tech giants but it eventually stays locked and dies there, with no way of getting access. Having a meaningful access to the digital footprint of a loved one could help remembering and even recovering some of the things they've said and done.

Re: What happens to your data after you die
 

Imagine dynamos data showing up on eBay with no reserve but its really just a filthy duplicate :y

If u get a tombstone at ur barriel, you could pull some DaVinci code type shit and hide an external inside it flooding with sm screen shots :U

Re: What happens to your data after you die
 

idk i'll be dead by then anyway

Re: What happens to your data after you die
 

I know facebook has settings where you can choose to either delete your account or choose someone else to manage it when you pass.

As far as other data, it'd be similar. Pick someone to either manage it or delete it. I'd assume you can choose what you would like to happen to it like you would any of your other assets. That'd be something you'd draft up with a lawyer when/if you actually write a will.

Re: What happens to your data after you die
 

not sure but an ffr quote is definitely going on my tombstone so in some sense that data will live on longer than I will

Re: What happens to your data after you die
 

I'll take every picture you have of your mcdonalds scale model guy dude

Re: What happens to your data after you die
 

You're wise to plan for FFR to outlive you.

Re: What happens to your data after you die
 

If you've published data or content online, you may or may not actually have legal ownership over the IP. If there are certain arty things you've made that you really care about, you should check the legal+privacy policies on those sites.

Any unpublished stuff shouldn't be a problem though, if you will it to your estate when you pass.

Re: What happens to your data after you die
 

In 2243 we will be in the history books as FFR's founding fathers.

Re: What happens to your data after you die
 

Leave the physical media to people, like you can specifically will your computer to somebody. The logins and passwords aren't tangible items so you can't leave them to anybody formally, just either tell the people you want to have them, before you die, or write them down in a physical book, and leave the book to the person you want to have the credentials.

Almost any other digital asset you have (Like, contents of an MMO character etc) you almost certainly don't actually own, since all of their setups are basically giving you a license to access the service which wouldn't persist past your death.

Canada is a signatory to the Berne Convention so anything creative you produce is automatically under copyright even if you don't register it. If you've submitted it to somewhere else, most policies have you give them an extremely broad but -non-exclusive- right to use your work, so while they'd retain that right, you still retain yours.

Re: What happens to your data after you die
 

It's pretty reasonable nowadays to have online/internet information drafted into a will and have some level of split of who gets access to what after you die, and it's fairly common nowadays with celebrities or high priority figures. I think music labels and social media accounts for singers/music artists were some of the first to get internet information the legal treatment, so I don't really see any difference here besides the amount of attention one gets over the other.

I would go so far as to say that if some information online was important enough to be considered a 'business', you could essentially leave that 'business' to some other person and they can decide whether or not to undertake that or leave it to some other person. After all, 'what they decide to do with it is up to them'.

Re: What happens to your data after you die
 

But I mean like...things like logins and passwords aren't real property so you can't transfer them to somebody else. You can -basically- do it, you just do it by like...putting the information into a physical form and then willing the physical object to the person.

You can't leave "Your FFR account" to your kids because it's not an actual -thing-. And I would think that if you gave the logins and passwords to somebody else who used it after you died, places like WoW could actually have grounds to argue that their license to access their services wasn't transferrable by you to somebody else.

If a social media account is a component of a company, and you were the owner of the company, and you gave control of the company to somebody in your will, then yeah the social media account would be included as part of "owning the company" but I'm not entirely sure you could classify it as an asset in itself.

Basically everything to do with the internet is fraught and nonsense, and the established law is lagging years behind it though, so who knows where it will all end up.

Re: What happens to your data after you die
 

There are actual cases of people utilizing a "cyberwill" to accommodate for splitting of accounts, data and online information in an estate. It can be argued that logins/passwords aren't a property, but the content locked behind those logins/passwords very well could be, since it can be anything between a neopets account to a youtube influencer account.

Also agree that you would have to check ToS of any accounts you include in a "cyberwill" to make sure that doing such a thing would not violate the guidelines of owning the account.

Re: What happens to your data after you die
 

Carl eats it. (not that carl)

Re: What happens to your data after you die
 

I think that's a terrific question, which I haven't fully solved myself.

At the moment, I try to take advantage of free cloud storage options as much as possible. For example, all my step charts are stored on GitLab in a repository. I have separate repositories for code I've written, pieces of text, my website etc. I post most of my videos on YouTube or Google Photos, hoping that they won't get deleted someday...

All my credentials are stored in a password manager, and I plan of giving the access codes to the vault in my will. That way, my "successors" will have access to everything, even unlisted cloud content.

Re: What happens to your data after you die
 

It really has to be looked at via a real world scenario of what would constitute something valuable vs not valuable, to get a definitive answer to the idea.

Say, a twitch streamer dies, and leaves the access keys to his account, stream setup, computer, etc. to one individual. One person might find value in the computer and keep the computer, and see no value in keeping an account of someone whom is dead, and have it deleted.

A completely different person may see no value in the computer and sell it since they have a better one, but keep the twitch account because there are still active subscribers and people subscribing. There's shit-tons of twitch accounts out there that don't really stream anymore, but see steady income because people like the emotes, and Twitch is okay with hooking the account to someone else because they don't want to see that income loss.

The perspective in value depends on the person who receives it. Quite literally the saying 'one man's junk is another man's treasure' rings true here. Since you can't actively measure the 'value' of one account on a service to another, they all get treated equally when written down as 'the keys to this person's something' as an asset. Whether those keys are to a broken down honda civic, or a lamborghini.


Who knows. Right now you may think of a Neopets account is valueless, literal garbage, they're free to make so just make another one. People had the same opinion of Pokemon cards about 10 years ago.