How will Facebook, Twitter and Google deal with your death?
Have you ever wondered what will happen to your online accounts after you pass away? Here are a few facts about what you can do to protect your digital legacy.
For the past two decades our lives of most of us have been gradually shifted from real life to online space. We’ve created hundreds of accounts and collected thousands of documents, photos and videos. Even though we say that that nothing really disappears from the internet, we should figure out what will happen to our internet account if we die or will be physically unable to go online.
The awareness of the problem has been increasing over the last few years. That’s way almost all of the major players in the internet industry have created some ideas for death planning and give their users a way to keep their content safe and give their trusted family members and friends authority to delete your accounts and to keep all of your important media and documents safe. Apart from Google, Facebook or Twitter there are specialized services like Vivala.me who provide a complex help for all people who are interested in protecting their digital legacy.
So here is what you should know about what the major web services offer in terms of protecting your assets.
Google allows you to choose up to 10 people who can be the executors of your account when your’re inactive for a longer period of time. How does it work? You decide about the amount of time between sign-ins for your account. When you don’t log in for a certain period of time, the account becomes “inactive”. That means your digital executors get an email that something may have happened to you and your wishes about the future of your profile. A person can get a full access to your data, get a part of it that you’ve specified or an ability to just simple delete the account.
In case of Facebook, a verified person authorized through the Facebook legacy contact will be able to write a post that will stay on the top of your profile and change your profile photo. This person will have an access to your public activity but will be unable read your private messages. The profile of a deceased person can be set in the “In Memory of” mode or otherwise you may decide to delete your profile completely just after the Facebook is notified of your death.
In case of Twitter, the plan for your account after your die is pretty simple. You may authorize a verified immediate family member to delete your profile once the person provides documents such as death certificate and other necessary documents. If you become incapacitated, the same can be done with the help of the attorney.
Snapchat, LinkedIn etc.
Other services like LinkedIn or Snapchat doesn’t have a specific plan for the deceased users accounts. They only allow the closest living relatives to delete the profiles after submitting death certificate or precise information about the person.
Vivala.me
Many people believe that the steps above are still not enough in case of protecting your digital legacy such as family photos and videos and important documents. They are also considering a safe way to distribute your digital will and send farewell videos for their beloved ones. Vivala.me is the complete digital estate planning service, allowing you to take control over all your assets, from images to files and future messaging, ensuring everything is delivered to your loved ones at the right time with complete respect, securely and simply.
This is done by you simply creating what we call “an asset,” entering your digital account’s details, and assigning trustees to these assets. Your trustees are people to whom you wish to bequeath digital assets of yours after you pass away.
Vivala.me has carefully developed a complex and thorough verification procedure, making sure that your asset’s information is only bestowed on the appropriate trustee in the unfortunate event of your passing away, and not before then.
If you are interested in protecting your digital legacy through Vivala.me and learn more about the digital assets protection you can simply visit the website and test it free for 3 months.
