Now that I am dead, who checks my Gmail and Facebook?

So not so long back in 2005, a 22-year young boy passed away in an accident. His mother was so upset that she made an attempt to understand the life her son used to live. So she took her son's password from his friend and logged into his Facebook account. After that she sent an email to this social networking company and asked permission to see her son's post and other details. And then, within 2 hours, the password was reset and she was locked out of her own deceased sons FB account.

So what is the moral of this story? It is simply, that if you die, nobody gets to access your profile unless they have your password. Not even your mother. And if she somehow manages to log in to the same, she will be breaching the 'terms of service'.

So every wondered about your 'digital remains' which would keep lingering around the internet if you die someday? Your family cannot access it, but the service providers like facebook, gmail and twitter can. 

In the era that we are living in today, most of the storage has been made digital. Every social media service has a policy in which, if found 'guilty' of accessing somebody else's account, it will be a breach of their conditions and you will be locked out immediately. The mother of the deceased had sued FB in an attempt to  gain access for her son's account. But she has been fighting for 10 years. In these 10 years, she has been granted many other options like closing or freezing her sons account. But did not grant the permission to a mother to understand her late son a little better.

Just recently, Facebook introduced a new policy currently available only in the US in which a living member can nominate a manager for his account if anything happens to the former member. Google+ have also introduced the concept of a digital heir. In 2013 Google Inactive Account Manager came live. 

Today most of our memories are scattered across the internet. Apart from sentimental reasons, there are also practical reasons for a family member to want access to the account of a deceased member. So what do we do after we die? We leave our life scattered in the ruins of the binary or do we give our parents a chance to simply know us better? Who are these third party social networking people to decide who knows me better? I do. My family does.