What happens to your online accounts when you die? What happens to the numerous user logins you've accumulated after you die or become too infirm to manipulate a keyboard? Some people have a plan, the digital equivalent of living will, or have chosen "family" option in a password management package such as LastPass or have entrusted a book of passwords to a family member. But …
"Americans Own Less Stuff, and That’s Reason to Be Nervous What happens when a nation built on the concept of individual property ownership starts to give that up?"
https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-08-12/american-ownership-society-is-changing-thanks-to-technology
There is an interesting bit on this on the BBC.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-44829976
Dave Lee describes how his life in the USA is virtually free from posessions.
Owning nowt means that only the mega corps will own anything. Ownership is power.
>Owning nowt means that only the mega corps will own anything.
Yes the one thing missing from Dave Lee's piece is the monthly pay cheque that enables much of this; stop getting the monthly pay cheque and suddenly owning nothing but a whole bunch of monthly payments becomes a lot less attractive. So the subscription model helps to keep everyone busy looking out for the next pay cheque rather than watching what the mega corps are doing...
You make a good point.
What happens not if but when the Robot takes your job and the income stops?
You lose your job, all your stuff that your leased on the 'never never' gets taken away and you have nothing to sell to delay the inevitable 'get out of my house' eviction. Property prices will drop by 90%.
We are heading for a huge meltdown in society.
We won't have a few tens of thousands living on the streets, it will be 40%-70% (at least) of the population.
The 'have's' will zoom by in their Level 5 flying pods totally ignorant of the plight of the rest of us.
The end is nigh.
We are doomed.
The majority of the population will have no money to buy anything including food.
Vive la Revolution.
"Americans Own Less Stuff, and That’s Reason to Be Nervous What happens when a nation built on the concept of individual property ownership starts to give that up?"
Some of the stuff the linked article lists as objects you own are ephemera - most people don't keep the newspapers or magazines they bought - today's news is tomorrow's chip wrapper. Books are more likely to be kept but personally, I'm about to send a consignment to the local charity bookshop.
Even the more solid stuff like furniture can have a finite life. Whilst the extremely solid oak bookcase we bought years ago and has been dragged after us round two countries is by now a potentially valuable antique; the Ikea bookshelves are never going to achieve that status.
The thing I really find interesting is the discussion of ultimate lack of ownership of iThings, Office 365 etc as Apple and other vendors can control the fate of them by controlling their subscription software. In contrast here I am, with my Linux kit, LibreOffice etc., all that stuff which its more extreme critics used to label communist, in undisputed private ownership of my own stuff. Does that make me a capitalist instead of a neo-feudal villein?
Not just in America, but pretty much everywhere, we're becoming a society of tenant serfs who never really get to own anything, but only have the temporarily privilege of using things in exchange for labour. The only difference between now and the days of actual feudalism is that today this exchange is usually indirect - i.e. you work for one entity, but use the money earned from that to pay the "rental" fees for, increasingly, your entire existence - not just your home. More direct examples include prostituting yourself to advertising in exchange for "free" apps and online services, again none of which you own or have any control over (a fact that will only bother you when they pull the plug, or when they ban/demonetise/censor you for violating their arbitrary "terms").
And the primary driving force behind this devolution is intellectual monopoly. It's literally enslaving us.
This bothers me in principle, because the idea of working for nothing but the ability to pay bills is not only utterly demoralising but literally slavery. In practice it'd bother me more if I had children, because I'd be painfully aware that not only would they be born into this slavery but I'd also have nothing to bequeath them, since you can't bequeath rented property.
But as someone with no children, and frankly unlikely to ever have any, whatever little property I have will simply end up in a landfill site when I die anyway, so it's probably pointless me having any. I certainly won't be in a position to care about what happens to my digital footprint after I'm gone.
I would hope that would not apply to most people.
"And the primary driving force behind this devolution is intellectual monopoly."
no, it's the willingness of people to surrender a part of their freedom to others, i.e. to "the elite", whether it's governments or corporations. Certain "evil" corporations are only just a PART of that, when driven by motives that are NOT "give the customer what he wants and make a profit". When it becomes "drive the customer to do what WE want, and make them PAY US FOR IT" - that's the problem.
Right, Microsoft?
there are accounts that need to be passed on though. Think of online insurance portals, my other half is covered under my car insurance for example. Or the family annual holiday insurance. Netflix is another and so is the gas and leccy. Plenty are "in my name" for the online account but not necessarily in just my name for the ownership.
"there are accounts that need to be passed on though. Think of online insurance portals, my other half is covered under my car insurance for example. Or the family annual holiday insurance. Netflix is another and so is the gas and leccy. Plenty are "in my name" for the online account but not necessarily in just my name for the ownership."
It's not obvious to me that car insurance, even if it covers two people, is transferable upon the death of the person who signed the contract. Unless you both signed it, which I don't think you did, because that's not how insurance normally works.
"That’s because you’re buying into a licence to use a thing, as opposed to buying the thing itself." ...
Unless you purchased it as a subscription, then that B$, the argument here ultimately exactly the same as used-games and used-DVDs.
If I have paid for a product, which has supplied a physical media or downloadable copy of content (that I can store).. then I own that particular copy of that product. In which case, upon my death, I will hand ownership of that, to whoever I please. As for digital products, such as Steam, then ownership of this account will transfer to my Kin.
If I have paid for a product, which has supplied a physical media or downloadable copy of content (that I can store).. then I own that particular copy of that product. In which case, upon my death, I will hand ownership of that, to whoever I please.
Be aware that if it's an Apple app store buy, they will absolutely NOT transfer the purchase from the deceased's account to a living person's, not even if you can produce the relevant death certificate. YMMV with Google Play.
"If I have paid for a product, which has supplied a physical media or downloadable copy of content (that I can store)"
The physical medium the product was supplied on you own. You own the physical medium on which you stored the download although your use of the download itself maybe defined by the terms you agreed to (possibly without reading) before the server would deign to start the download; in this case your rights to pass on the stored download might be less than you assumed. A product which is streamed is going to be subject to T&Cs which forbid you from capturing it even if DRM doesn't prevent you from physically doing so.
The T&Cs will determine whether you can legally pass any of that onto your kin or anyone else.
Strictly speaking, this has been the case for a long time, at least as far as software, movies and music go.
It's just that in the past they had no way of enforcing it because there was no connection between them and the item you "bought". Now...there is and they can and they will.
Microsoft and others are tired of gambling on who will upgrade. The subscription model is simply guaranteed automatic upgrade, which is effectively forced on the users--reducing the gamble for the provider and also reducing the users free market influence.
But, then I'm one of those who has been traumatized by every Windows upgrade that employers put us through.
Clip from The Man Show - cleaning up after you die for the single guy:
The Rest Assured service - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H_QA7M2vQBw
"Your family will remember you by what you've left behind... when you're gone, it's too late to hide any evidence of your hedonistic lifestyle (get that goat off the bed!)"
"That’s because you’re buying into a licence to use a thing, as opposed to buying the thing itself."
Thats why I will not buy any music or movies that don't come with physical media. I read a while back about someone who had several thousands of pounds worth of music on iTunes and after they died a family member who tried to claim the departeds music collection was left to them, Itunes promptly informed them that the licences were not transferable and locked the account.
Its something that I tell everyone when buying music from itunes or similar.
I'm not sure I see it as so much of a problem.
The world is changing fast and your kids don't like the same music/movies/games as you and generally don't want to *own* digital content in the same way older generations are interested in owning things. In fact, apart from houses and the odd sentimental keepsake, I reckon people will be increasingly less interested in inheriting things from their parents at all.
"If I got a message from a dead relative I think that I would be rather more likely to categorize it as a scam"
However rational you are, the insensitivity of scammers will not likely be a comfort to you. If you are like me, it will only fuel your pessimism about the future of humanity.
However rational you are, the insensitivity of scammers will not likely be a comfort to you. If you are like me, it will only fuel your pessimism about the future of humanity.
In my case it was the insensitivity of ordinary sites that, after I asked to no longer pay the monthly charge for the product for my late wife (and said why), sent a "Please come back" plea to her email address. I was coldly polite about it (including pointing out that I had my own subscription to their service and therefore didn't need to use hers, and got an apologetic and understanding email from an actual human, and nothing further from them to Mrs Cynic's email.
The worst was Elsevier, the scientific journal publisher. It took me ages and ages to convince them to stop sending stuff, since any one "unsubscribe" unsubscribed from only that one thing.
And I already have a surfeit of pessimism about the future of humanity, thanks.
before it is too late.
I'm struggling with getting just over a £100 back from Mastercard on my Mothers account. Due to the onset of dementure, she paid her bill twice. Now and because she would not sign a power of Attorney, they won't pay the money into her bank account (at the same bank as the card issuer).
It looks like I'm going to have to wait until I have a death certificate to get the money from them.
The whole thing with situations like this and online accounts is a frigging nightmare. And it will only get worse.
Sad situation, but the same a friend of mine is experiencing - his wife has Alzheimers and cannot sign anything anymore. He was able to get an attorney, a medical examiner and some friends as witness and got a Power of Attorney to sign for her. I guess this would be considerably more difficult if she has passed away.
"I guess this would be considerably more difficult if she has passed away."
It ought not to be as the power then automatically passes to the executor. There would, however, be a delay until probate's granted. The real problem lies in customer service scripts not having a section for dealing with probate or powers of attorney and their ISO9000 insistence on repeatability means that they repeatedly fail.
When my Mother passed away, she had an account with Tesco Bank. Her brother-in-law called Tesco, but they refused to close the account because they would only talk to the account holder. When my uncle explained that the account holder was dead (he offered to send a copy of the Death Certificate), they repeated their position of only talking to the account holder and no-one else. So we asked the solicitor to talk to Tesco Bank - he got the same response!
Luckily, there was only a couple of pounds in the account, so we gave up, but the moral of the story is: It doesn't matter what position you are in (even death) - if the company doesn't want to do something - it won't!
Respectfully, I'm not convinced on this (IANAL). When someone dies the executors of their estate gain control of it via the process of Probate assuming they don't die intestate (i.e. without a Will) which complicates things. Once the executors have completed the process of probate they can (along with a death certificate) gain access to the affairs of the deceased (things like ownership/possessions/property/financial affairs) so they can close down their estate. This is all done in writing so I suspect the problem you faced is that you tried to do this over the phone (the solicitor should have known better). I can understand the call centre droid declining to talk to someone on the basis of "The account holder has died, honest" even if the scripted reply sounds a bit odd. On the other hand I would be quite surprised if Tesco Bank were routinely disregarding the legal process of Probate without censure, and organisations like this usually have specialist bereavement teams to deal with this process. AIUI once the executors have completed probate an organisation like Tesco Bank could only challenge their access to the accounts by challenging the probate itself (again IANAL).
Having had to work through things like this when my father died, and with the prospect of having to do so on my mother's demise, I can honestly say that this sort of wuckfittery is standard and normal. When someone dies, a legal process is set in motion which is constrained to follow a certain course, the steps therein being responses to age-old con tricks played to gain control of living persons' money.
So, you have to go through a series of steps to obtain a death certificate; when you do so I would strongly advise obtaining a dozen or so legal copies as this is cheaper at the time of issue rather than later. Most financial institutions will do precisely zero unless and until they get sight of a certified death certificate; this is legally mandated. Once they have a death certificate, some behave efficiently, some require prodding and some flap around like wet hens and have to be prompted every step of the way.
Once all this has gone through and you have obtained final accountings of all the deceased's assets and debts and have paid them all, then you can make a list of everything they owned and stick it on a probate form. It is the making of the list that is the difficult bit; gathering all the info is the time-consuming part of it. Actually filling the form out is dead easy, especially as the instructions and guidance are pretty much idiot-proof. Unless everything is horribly complicated or you have the IQ of an aubergine, you don't need a solicitor to hand-hold you through filling out a form.
Obtaining probate then gives you a certificate of probate. Once again, obtain a number of certified copies of this since no company will move unless they have had one of these certificates in their hands; they are legally required to act this way. They are not legally required to act like incompetent idiots who have never even heard of the concept of customers dying; this is merely part of the (dis)service that many offer.
One useful trick I found for applying boot to buttock in such cases is the Letter of Instruction, which is a letter with that wording as a title, signed by all executors, declaring who you are, what has happened, what certified proof you have and what you want to happen. Generally this gets things moving nicely.
@Dr Dan "I would strongly advise obtaining a dozen or so legal copies [of the death certificate]". A good post throughout but this is spot on advice. Everyone and his dog wants to see the original death certificate before lifting a finger so if you've only got one you'll be years sorting everything out. Get 10 or so copies and the paperwork become much easier to plough through.
Yes, many copies. Just going through this after my father' s death. The solicitor has been completely useless, HSBC's bereavement service an utter shambles, and more than one party we have had to notify have needed a second death certificate after loosing the first one.
Sometimes people have accounts in more than one name, for example they might use a shortened version of their name, or at some point they decided they disliked their given first name and started going under their middle name or another. BEFORE you get the death certificate, check all accounts you can to see if this happened and get all names and spellings they used put on the certfificate.
What you have said is all very well provided that the executor:
- can access the deceased's password protected computer/phone/etc.;
- has or can ascertain from the PC/phone/etc. a full list of all sites on which the deceased has accounts, and means of contacting the providers of all such accounts (even when they are huge US conglomerates);
- can access the deceased's e-mail to be aware of and attend to incoming correspondence, etc.; and notify appropriate people of the death;
- etc..
I have read stories of a family who son was killed on active service, and who wanted access to his e-mails (describing his active service), photos, etc. in order to remember him - but where Yahoo refused on the grounds that email accounts were not transferable, until Yahoo lost a US Court case invoked by the family.
Also, does the deceased's Will state what they want to happen to any collections of, for example, photos, projects, research, etc. residing on the device?
Those are a few of the issues that are not readily handled by a standard probate process. There are also now a number of websites & books that do address these issues:
http://www.yourdigitalafterlife.com/
https://www.techlicious.com/how-to/how-to-manage-your-online-accounts-after-you-die/
https://www.lifewire.com/your-online-accounts-when-you-die-3486015
https://www.everplans.com/#/
https://www.hacker9.com/pass-your-online-accounts-after-death.html
https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/one-simple-trick-will-share-online-account-access-death/
http://www.thedigitalbeyond.com/
https://mashable.com/2010/10/11/social-media-after-death/?europe=true#JSQhLkc6eGq9
The following comments from YouGov (https://yougov.co.uk/news/2015/04/13/widespread-confusion-over-who-owns-online-accounts/) are interesting:
"The research revealed a serious lack of understanding over who owns digital content after death. Over a third of adults online (36%) believe that Facebook own content by default after death; 20% think that next of kin inherit the content; over one in four (27%) don’t know; whilst 17% believe that no-one owns the content.
"The survey also suggests that apathy amongst digital service users may be fuelling the risks. Almost half (48%) of respondents admitted to not reading the T&Cs before opening an online account, whilst 40% admitted to not reading them and continuing to use the service when contacted about a T&Cs update. Only one in five (20%) claimed to fully understand the terms and conditions before they opened an online account.
"The research revealed that people are not sharing their digital passwords with loved ones or in their will. More than half of adults (52%) said no-one, including friends or family, would be able to access their online accounts should anything happen to them."
The issues may not be as straight-forward as you suggest.
You have clearly never had to deal with the morons who work for Tesco bank, I spent 20 minutes on the phone to them about an over fee charge that the call centre droid promised me was a mistake and I would not be charged for as their text alerts doesn't seem to bother sending me messages despite it being set up to do so. 3 weeks later the charge appears on my account along with a letter in the post, phoned up to speak to someone again and they had no record of my previous 20 minute conversation or the promise that the fee would not be charged to me and had to go through the whole thing again.
They then promised they would waive the fee and give me 25 pounds as compensation, which never showed up meaning I need to phone them AGAIN to sort it out.
Really?
I'm dead - don't GAF about my 'carefully curated online presence.'
And so long as none of my surviving family are simple-minded enough to fall for scams by their deceased relative, I won't have to turn in my grave with embarrassment at how anyone in my family could be that retarded.
Seriously...
Sort your finances out and any associated property matters and nothing else matters.
If you want to pass your Netflix account to someone then do so before you die (duh). If you can't because you went senile in the meantime well, you know what, we never found where my grandmother buried the gold sovereigns in the park either - life's a bitch.
*sigh*
My carefully curated online presence?
Talk about first world problems.
There is the issue of occasional contacts and social groupings whom you would like, perhaps, to be advised of your death.
In t'good old days it was often a question of delving through the deceased's possessions[1] to find an address book, and then get busy on the phone/letter writing (had to do that a couple of times) but in the absence of email/whatever passwords that could become a lot mode difficult.
[1] Strictly, I don't think you have any possessions once you're dead. But I'm not a thanatalogical lawyer.
> the issue of occasional contacts and social groupings whom you would like, perhaps, to be advised of your death.
There is that, yes, but you can always put up an online memorial to the person in question for interested parties to find when researching whatever happened to that person they (in a completely uncharacteristic manner) haven't bothered to call for six months despite having been in regular contact for the last thirty years - and if they weren't in contact with you frequently enough for them to notice that you haven't spoken in six months and make enquiries, just how significant is it that they don't hear of your death anyway?
Besides, what about the people in ye oldene dayes who didn't keep a written contact list either? How did people resolve the issue then?
Or those who hid the key to the chest?
Or didn't mention the combination to the family safe before getting run over by a bus?
Seriously, you'd think this were a whole new class of problem that had suddenly arisen thanks to the advent of technology when it isn't - Malibu Stacey has a new hat and that's all there is to it.
Yes it could, under the right circumstances, be a serious matter if someone can't log into your online account but, no, it's not new, it's just the same old issue of your heirs not having the combination to the safe containing the deeds to the house because you never gave it to them and (sensibly) didn't write it down in a little, black book with entries like "Mistress who will need to know why I'm not paying her rent any more", "Secret gay lovers who might want to attend my funeral", "Blackmailers I'm paying not to mention my paedophile activities to anyone" or "The combination to the safe behind the rather tacky Constable Haywain print in the ugly frame on the back wall of the study on the second floor of the house."
This is all a fuss by people who really have nothing better to do than pick lint out of their navels. The problem here isn't one of technology but of information distribution and the solution is the same as it has ever been: give someone the information required to deal with whatever issues they (not you) might be confronted with upon your demise and the job's a good'un.
If you're worried about them abusing the privilege then keep a list of all your accounts/passwords with a solicitor/lawyer and update it whenever you add/delete/change account details and they can give it to your appointed next of kin upon your death.
But worrying about your 'carefully curated' online presence? Get a job!
"[...] a little, black book with entries like "Mistress who will need to know why I'm not paying her rent any more"
For many years an elderly neighbour would entertain me with choice details from her life. Having worked in a local legal office all her life she knew the scandals of the local high and mighty. One particular task was to facilitate the regular "anonymous" payments to what in those days were termed illegitimate children.
When she died she had left instructions for her life's collection of daily diaries to be destroyed. Her daughter decided to read them first.
In her own retirement the daughter embarked on the project by learning Pitman shorthand - which was loosely what her mother had used. She then discovered a new challenge - any reference to love affairs was in coded entries. The daughter was already privy to the general details - but eventually broke the code as well.
The daughter did make one serious faux pas after the funeral. She knew her mother had been very candid with me - so it was assumed I knew "everything". She then made a reference that was a bombshell. Oops! I didn't know that one - even though I should have guessed from the facts I had already.
@ John Brown (no body)
In the early 1990s there was an RPG by the name of Macho Women With Guns - a tasteful affair, as I'm sure you can imagine.
Recently, I stumbled upon an adventure supplement for it that left me utterly speechless.
The title of this awe inspiring oeuvre?
Nothing less than Adolf Hitler - Porn Star
That's just...
I can't even.
Words fail me - I am struck by a conflict of emotion so powerful that not even the Bard himself could have given word to it and all I can do is sink to my knees and sob inconsolably as though my heart will break forever.
In fact, I'd be hard pushed not to sell my soul to Satan in return for the opportunity to make that movie and become famous for it.
Eternal damnation vs being universally reviled in my own lifetime doesn't seem like much of a deal really, but, in return for said reviling (revilation?), I would be infamous for having made that movie.
You can see my dilemma.
In fact, sod it, I'd sell my soul in return for having been the person who came up with the RPG adventure supplement - the idea is so tasteless that I'd want to be a part of it any cost.
Anyway...
To return to my having fallen to my knees for a moment (a whilst you're down there kinda thing), for some reason, even though it was my very own title that set it off, it was your reply that set me thinking along these lines and for that I must thank you.
Because, I read it and instantly had a visual flash on someone 'eating' Hitler and, by extension, one of his future grandchildren (obviously said sexual penitent is a 'swallower') - I think it was the suggestion that said person was there with Hitler at the time, working on the Enigma Machine (it's a Nazi porn washing machine repair man moment, isn't it?)
*sigh*
I shouldn't be allowed out really, should I?
It's alright, I'm going (just let me get my coat first).
[EDIT]
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