Resources on Digital Assets and Estate Planning

PLEASE SEE IMPORTANT TAX STATEMENT AT THE END OF THIS BLOG.

Following up on my last post, The Drum Beat of Estate Planning for Digital Assets, I am posting here some sample language and a listing of digital asset resources online and in print.

Sample Language

Here are some digital asset provisions presented in an attempt to focus our thoughts about a generic definition:

            (18)    To access, take control of, handle, conduct, continue, distribute, dispose of, or terminate digital assets and digital accounts.  The term “digital assets” means, but is not limited to, data files (including but not limited to, emails, documents, images, audio, video, and similar digital files) that currently exist or may exist as technology develops or such comparable items as technology develops, stored on digital devices (including, but not limited to, desktops, laptops, tablets, peripherals, storage devices, mobile telephones, smartphones, and any similar digital device that currently exists or may exist as technology develops or such comparable items as technology develops), regardless of the ownership or location of the physical device upon which the digital asset is stored.  The term “digital accounts” means, but is not limited to, email accounts, software licenses, social network accounts, social media accounts, file sharing accounts, financial management accounts, domain registration accounts, domain name service accounts, web hosting accounts, tax preparation service accounts, accounting service accounts, data storage or back-up accounts, online stores, affiliate programs, other online accounts that currently exist or may exist as technology develops or such comparable items as technology develops.  The powers granted herein shall include the right to possess, receive and control any password, security code or other mechanism or device or means by which access to digital assets or digital accounts is achieved.[1]

. . . . . .

Powers/Other Provision re Digital Assets

To access, take control of, conduct, continue or terminate my accounts on any website, including, but not limited, to any social networking site, photo sharing site, blogging, micro-blogging, e-mail or short message service website, financial, multimedia, personal, or other online account, or comparable items as technology develops. All such websites may release my log-on credentials, including username and password, to my [Personal Representative][Trustee], and the website shall be indemnified and held harmless by my [estate][trust] for any damages, causes of action or claims that may result from this disclosure.

[ALTERNATIVE] Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets.  The [Personal Representative][Trustee]may properly access, take control of, handle, conduct, continue, distribute, dispose of, or terminate the interests in my digital property unless such actions are contrary to the terms of this [Trust Agreement][will] or applicable law.  

My “digital property” shall include any digital asset and digital account owned by me, and shall consist of the ownership and management interests in the digital asset and account.  For purposes of this Article “digital account” means, but is not limited to, an electronic account containing a digital asset and includes any social networking site, photo sharing site, blogging, micro-blogging or short message service website, email, financial, multimedia, personal, or other online account or comparable items as technology develops.  “Digital asset” means any text, images, multimedia information, or personal property stored in a digital or analog format, whether stored on a server, computer, or other electronic device, regardless of whether it is remotely stored, which currently exists or may exist as technology develops, and regardless of the ownership of the device upon which the digital asset is stored.  Digital assets include, without limitation, any words, characters, codes or contractual rights necessary to access the digital asset, including any related intellectual property rights.  

In furtherance of the foregoing, the [Trustee][Personal Representative] is authorized to take any step necessary to terminate [or continue] any personal Web site operated by me at the time of my death.  Any website or entity controlling or sponsoring a digital asset may release my log-on credentials, including username and password, to my [Personal Representative][Trustee], and the website or entity shall be indemnified and held harmless by my [estate][trust] for any damages, causes of action or claims that may result from this disclosure.[2]

. . . . . . .

(8) “Digital asset” means information created, generated, sent, communicated, received, or stored by electronic means on a digital device or system that delivers digital information. The term includes a contract right.[3]

. . . . . .

Digital assets are defined as electronic content and/or media and the right to use that content or media, including: email accounts, smartphones, tablets, netbooks and computers, online sales accounts, online purchasing accounts, online storage accounts, webpages, domain names, blogs, social network accounts, and intellectual property rights in such digital assets.[4]

---

[1]               Used with permission.

[2]               Used with permission.

[3]               National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws, Draft, See Section IV.L, infra.

[4]               Estate Planning and Administration with Digital Assets, Karin Praugley, Krasnow Sanders, LLP, Chicago, Illinois.  May 2013 Maryland State Bar.  Association Estate & Trust Law Section Dinner.

Resources

Here are some additional resources on digital assets and estate planning for digital assets:

Estate Planning in the Digital Age, Gerry W. Beyer, Texas Tech University School of Law, April 21, 2013

Estate Planning and Administration with Digital Assets, Karin Prangley, Krasnow Sanders, LLP, Chicago, Illinois.  May 2013 Maryland State Bar.  Association Estate & Trust Law Section Dinner.

Estate Administration in Cyberspace - Colin Korzec and Ethan A. McKittrick

Trusts & Estates, September 2011

Helping Clients Reach Their Great Digital Beyond - Evan E. Carroll, John W. Romano and Jean Gordon Carter

Trusts & Estates, September 2011

Virtual Assets - Michael walker and Vitoria Blachly

Tax Management Estates, Gifts & Trusts Journal 2011, page 253

Digital Death: Estate Planning for Passwords, Online Accounts, and Digital Property - James D. Lamm - San Francisco, CA - 2012

Digital Passing - A blog authored by James D. Lamm

Pixar for Estate Planners: Animating Your Practice Through Social Media and Forever Friending Your Clients Digital Assets - The Do’s, Don’ts and How To’s of New Communication Channels - Robert Kirkland

'Til Death Do Us Part:  A Proposal for Handling Digital Assets After Death, Chelsea Ray, Real Property, Trust and Estate Law Journal, Winter 2013, Vol.47, No. 3., page 583 et seq.

The Digital Beyond, http://www.thedigitalbeyond.com/

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The Drum Beat of Estate Planning for Digital Assets

Suddenly (or finally?), digital assets are moving to the forefront of discussion in the estate planning world.  Digital assets in estate planning have not exactly been ignored in recent years.  Extensive papers and articles on the subject have been written by noted academics and estate planners like Gerry W. Beyer, Naomi Cahn, James D. Lamm and Robert Kirkland.  There are websites devoted to digital assets and planning, such as The Digital Beyond (http://www.thedigitalbeyond.com/).

This year, however, may turn out to be a banner year for the topic. Let's look just at the Baltimore area.  In the May, the Maryland State Bar Association ("MSBA") Section of Estate and Trust Law  (the "ETL Section") invited Karin Prangley of Krasnow Sanders, LLP, in Chicago to give a presentation at its annual dinner meeting entitled Estate Planning and Administration with Digital Assets.  In October Michael Oliver and I presented a discussion entitled Dealing with Digital Assets as part of an MSBA Continuing Education Hot Topics Program.  Next week, the Baltimore Estate Planning Council presents American College of Trust & Estate Counsel ("ACTEC") Fellow Robert Kirkland, who is speaking on the topic Stay Linked With Your Clients by Helping Them Forever Friend Their Digital Property.  The MSBA ETL Section has formed a committee on Digital Assets and, in the near future, intends to post on its website resources on digital assets and estate planning .

Nationally, Gerry Beyer and Naomi Cahn just presented a webcast for the American Bar Association entitled Ownership and Transfer of Digital Assets.  ACTEC has just authorized a Digital Assets Taskforce.  The National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws ("NCCUSL") is reaching the final stages in drafting a uniform digital asset statute to address issues of definition and control under state law.  Several states already have enacted (widely differing) statutes and others, Maryland included, are considering such legislation.

With all this activity, it is not possible to present here an exhaustive summary of what you should know about digital assets.  What I would like to offer is a short overview of the primary issues involved in estate planning for digital assets.

What Are Digital Assets?

This question would seem deceptively simple, but in reality it is the complex starting point for any planning.  To capture some sense of scope of this term, I will borrow the four primary categories that Professors Beyer and Cahn used in their recent presentation:

• Personal Assets - Examples:  email, digital photographs, playlists, digital music files.
• Social Media Assets - Examples:  Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, Twitter accounts.
• Financial Accounts - Examples:  online bank, credit and investment accounts, electronic bill paying.
• Business Accounts - Examples:  commercial sales websites, online business records.

At the heart of any digital asset likely is the concept of digital rights - the exact legal ownership rights an individual holds to domain names, licensing rights to digital information, websites and accounts that contain digital information (blogs, online journals, writings, photographs, or posting).  After all, legal rights are what someone may be able to transfer to someone else.

In approaching the universe of digital assets, there is a quest for a universal definition.  Here is one attempt from NCCUSL's working draft of a state digital asset statute:

“Digital asset” means information created, generated, sent, communicated, received, or stored by electronic means on a digital device or system that delivers digital information. The term includes a contract right.

Also consider two other critical factors:

Location.  As the old saying goes, location is everything.  Digital assets can reside on physical media like hard drives, thumb drives or digital storage disks.  They also can exist online or in the "cloud" in electronic accounts, digital photograph albums, websites and blogs

Access.    Is there a box in the desk drawer that holds the thumb drive?  Are passwords, PINs and other access codes needed to reach digital assets online?  If so, safekeeping of access information also will be critical.

Location and access information thus are fundamental to any planning for the time when someone else must round up these digital assets -- after the client becomes disabled or dies and cannot access their digital assets.

Value.

The value of digital assets is also an involved issue.  Some digital assets, such as domain names or blogs, may have monetary value that can be significant. The IRS may be interested in the value of digital assets for gift and estate tax purpose.  There are valuation services that can help determine the value of some digital assets.  A client's commercial website may be a fundamental part of a client's business and its value.  Some digital assets may have little monetary value, but great personal value to the client and the client's family.  Think of digital photographs posted online at sites like Facebook or Instagram or personal online writings in blogs or websites.

Security.

Digital assets themselves and their access information likely should be secured to protect them from unauthorized access and loss of value.  This too is a complicate topic, especially after considering the next item --- legal issues.

Legal Issues and Developing Law.

•  What Legal Rights Does the Client Hold?  This is one of the most perplexing parts of digital assets.  In some situations, the client may "own" the digital information.  In other situations, particularly involving social media and certain commercially purchased digital information (e.g. music files from iTunes), the client does not "own" the digital content, because copyright protection or restrictions under the terms of service for the online provider, which usually only grant the user a license to use the service, while the provider retains ownership over content.  Understanding the issues here requires at least a short course in intellectual property and online licensing agreements.

• What Legal Rights Do the Client's Successors Hold?  Here is where the unwary enter the minefield.

1. Applicable federal law is designed to protect digital assets from the unauthorized use of electronic information.  Federal laws were written at a time when the primary concern was to criminalize hacking and illegal use of digital information.  In the context of planning for a client's disability or death, however, these laws complicate matters.  A client's spouse or children may have the necessary information (location and access information) to reach the digital assets, but attempts to do so often violate the federal laws broadly described above.  A critical concept here is whether the person trying to reach the digital assets is "authorized" to do so by the actual owner. 
2. State law is not uniform in giving agents under a power of attorney or personal representatives or trustees authority to control and dispose of digital assets.  State statutes that exist are not uniform.  Many states have no statute at all.  Thus, such fiduciaries may not have statutory authority that constitutes "authorization" under applicable federal statutes.  The NCCUSL draft uniform state statute discussed above is an attempt to reach such a uniform law.
3. Terms of service agreements with providers often contractually establish separate procedures and rights for online accounts that are governed by the laws of a state that is favorable to the provider.

Planning 

Thus, particularly because of the legal issues just discussed, it is important to plan and address the authority to control digital assets in estate planning documents.

General suggestions with respect to planning for clients include:

• Ask the client for a listing of digital assets (a questionnaire would be useful).  Ultimately, the client should have an accurate inventory.
• Discuss the digital assets and their disposition with the client.  What does the client want?
• Estimate the monetary and personal value of the digital assets.
• Discuss with the client current security protecting access to digital assets and a method of preserving passwords, PINs, etc. so that a fiduciary has access to them.  (Consider carefully whether you, as attorney for the client, want to hold this information.  If you do, how are you going to safeguard such information? What are your professional obligations to the client with respect to this information?)
• Draft documents granting fiduciaries authority over digital assets.
• Consider use of specialize planning, such as a trust or limited liability company that would own rights to certain digital assets.

Clearly, there is much more that could be said on this topic and, happily, a broader dialogue is emerging.

UPDATE:  November 26, 2013

I neglected to mention in the opening paragraphs of this post the excellent article by Anne W. Conventry, Planning, Administration in a Digital World, which appeared in the September 2013 Issue of the Maryland Bar Bulletin.  

Mini Byte: David Pogue Looks at the "Other" Side of Your Facebook Life*

It is hard to compete with David Pogue, the New York Times tech writer, because he writes so well about technology and its practical applications.  Pogue often focuses not the technical wizardry itself, but on whether the technology actually accomplishes something that users want.

Two recent columns on Facebook's "Other" message directory are good examples.  (The foregoing link is to the second article, which as a link in it to the first.)  Facebook has a messaging feature in it by which users can send you messages.  Messages from your FB "Friends" go in your "Inbox".  Then, there is the "Other" box.   Like email, most of us want to get message that matter to us, but do not want spam or other irrelevant communication. Most of us, myself included overlooked the "Other" box or assumed that it contained spam or other unwanted posts.

How good is the "Friends"/"Other" function in Facebook at striking a balance between the wanted and unwanted?  First, users of FB need to know the difference and the intended function between the two inboxes.

Pogue set out to make FB users aware of the "Other" box and its function.  In response to his first post, readers went to their "Other" box.  Some found spam or other junk.  Some found much more, however, which is discussed in Pogue's second column:  notification of prize winnings, long lost friend, FB would be "Friends" (or stalkers).  When I looked into my "Other" box, I found a lot of invitations or concert ticket announcements that I probably would have wanted to see at the time they were sent.  There were also somewhat odd items, like an actual announcement from FB about policy changes.  (Do FB consider its own policies "junk"???)  You might hope that there is an easy way to move the messages that you would like to see in the future over to the "Inbox".

Unfortunately, as Pogue points out, here is where Facebook's technology breaks down:

You have only two options here: Basic (the factory setting, the one causing all the problems) and Strict.
Unfortunately, the Strict option puts even more messages into the “Other” folder! It’s making the problem of missed messages worse. (A warning there even says: “You may miss messages from other people you know.”)

Look: it’s clear that the “Other”-folder system is broken in a very upsetting way. It’s preventing important connections, blocking the very communications that Facebook was created to foster.

Let’s hope that Facebook finds a better solution to blocking unwanted messages. Because right now, the secret Other folder is swallowing up a lot more than spam.

It also seems difficult to get rid of the four years' worth of unread messages that I found in my "Other" box.  Facebook only seems to allow you to delete them individually (as "conversations", even though you never knew they were there or responded to them).

Read Pogue's second column at this link: David Pogue.  And, go your Facebook "Other" box (click on "Messages" first) and see what's in the your "Other" of your life.*

08/01/2013 - Here is a short update to this post:

I went to send a post on Facebook to someone with whom I was not "connected" (a FB "Friend").  This interesting message appeared below the post text box:

Your message will go to [Name of recipient]'s Other folder because you aren't connected to her on Facebook. See More

When I clicked on See More, here's the pop-up that appeared:

Send this message directly to her Inbox for $1.00 USD

So Facebook is now trying to squeeze cash out of us to get our posts into someone's Inbox!  Everything for a price!


*Apologies to Fred Neil for my abuse of the title to is great song "Other Side of  This Life" (perhaps better known to some by The Jefferson Airplane's cover version).

Mini Byte: Tech Travel Time - Eastern Shore Here We Come !!!

Just a quick mention of some wonderful travel resources put together by Pat Yevics and her staff at the Maryland State Bar Association.  Here is a link to the May 2013 Tech Talk e-newsletter that is full of useful links if you are headed to Maryland's Eastern Shore.  These links will help you year-round, whether you are going to the MSBA Bar Convention or not.

Big Law Flunks Computer Skills Test

Here is an article from the ABA Journal by Martha Neil that I will reproduce in its entirety because is short and to the point:

Frustrated by big bills for routine matters, D. Casey Flaherty, who serves corporate counsel at Kia Motors America, struck back with a computer skills test for BigLaw.

Invited to submit a senior associate of their choice for testing, the first nine firms flunked, Flaherty, a keynote speaker, told a large group attending the LegalTech West Coast conference in Los Angeles this week. One firm, he said, flunked twice, reports Law Technology News.

The issue is time, Flaherty explained in his talk on "Raising the Bar on Technological Competence—the Outside Counsel Tech Audit." Multiply a Microsoft Word or Excel task that should take seconds by minutes, especially if it is performed again and again, and it can add up to a significant amount of money at BigLaw firms' billable rates.

"The audit should take one hour," he said, "but the average pace is five hours."

Examples of tasks associates had trouble completing swiftly, because they obviously aren't being trained on such skills, included providing PDF documents for court submissions and getting documents Bates-numbered.

Although Flaherty conducted the skills audit for the nine BigLaw firms himself, he is working with an outside training firm to automate the skills audit. He then plans to provide it at no cost to general counsel at other companies.

An earlier Law Technology News video and two articles (Law Technology News, Jan. 24, 2013. and Law Technology News, Jan. 25, 2013) provide further details.

The practice of law faces many challenges today.  It would do well to learn how to use technology efficiently and to hire lawyers and staff capable of applying technology to meet client needs.  The most amazing part of the story above is that all of the law firms involved failed the test!

Corporate general counsel have long been focused on the bottom-line in hiring outside legal counsel.  When I was a summer clerk at a large law firm thirty plus years ago, the firm had lunches at which guest speakers discussed various aspects of the practice of law. Some spoke philosophically about the practice of law and client relationships.  Some told stories of great legal accomplishments.  One week the firm invited back one of its former associates who was now the corporate general counsel of one of the firm's major clients.  Somewhat shockingly, the corporate general counsel spoke bluntly about managing outside legal costs, going so far as to say that if law firms did not handle basic legal work efficiently, the law firms were likely to find that more and more of this work would be taken in-house and the corporate legal departments might cherry-pick good lawyers from large firms to work for the corporations.

The pressure for efficiency and affordability continues, even with individual clients and smaller law firms.  As lawyers, we need to step up to the challenge, particularly in using technology to accomplish work more quickly and at affordable costs.

Go to Martha's ABA Journal article to read comments submitted by readers. 

Location Services

Keeping your life private these days may be harder than you think.  You can shun social media and decline to "check-in" on Facebook or Foursquare, but you may still be carrying your cellphone around and it could be collecting information on you that your cellphone provider may be packaging and selling.  So reports the Wall Street Journal.

Your data is the big goldmine of online life.  Companies like Facebook and Google have histories on what you like and search and they use it to make money.  This is generally done by using that information to match your activity, likes, and searches with advertisers who may have a product in which you would be interested.

Those pesky ads that slip into your Facebook feed or pop up next to your Google search results are a product of  this type of data mining.  Google recently has been trying to resolve legal and public relations difficulties that resulted from its priority display of advertisers' sites ahead of other hits in its online search results.

The WSJ article points to another well-know fact of modern life.  If you have a cellphone, smart or not, the phone company (a.k.a communications Goliaths like Verizon and ATT) have data on you.  Lots of people may want that data, particularly on where go and who you call or on searches that you make through a smartphone.

One the one hand, you should be concerned about your civil liberty.  When something goes work, government law enforcement agencies, whether federal, state or local, may want to know a lot about you was talking to whom at the time of a certain event.  Think about the recent bombing at the Boston Marathon.  Law enforcement relied very heavily on video surveillance cameras in the area of the bombing to identify suspects.  Later, a cellphone's location tracking helped police follow the suspect's movements.  There is recent story of NYC police chasing down a stolen cellphone using the tracking system, complete with a "French Connection" car chase. (Here are links to reports by UPI, The Blaze and The Times Ledger)

Here's a part of the WSJ article on the new interest that cell carriers have in cashing in on your activities:

The information provides a powerful tool for marketers but raises new privacy concerns. Even as Americans browsing the Internet grow more accustomed to having every move tracked, combining that information with a detailed accounting of their movements in the real world has long been considered particularly sensitive.

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The new offerings are also evidence of a shift in the relationship between carriers and their subscribers. Instead of merely offering customers a trusted conduit for communication, carriers are coming to see subscribers as sources of data that can be mined for profit, a practice more common among providers of free online services like Google and Facebook.

It is unlikely that large cellphone carriers are going to turn their backs on the money to be made here.  They also insist in the WSJ article that they are taking care not to give advertisers anything that would identify individual users.  So, until we have a stricter set of laws about what happens to your data, the corporate holders of this data are essentially asking you to trust them.

So, what are you to do if you do wish your activities to be mined? You may not be able to do this completely without getting rid of your cellphone or other mobile device --- anything that connects to a network and therefore accumulates data on your activity with whoever runs the network.  But, there are some simple things that you can do to be more careful about the data that is accumulated.  To begin, be careful what you post on social media like Facebook and Foursquare.  When you check-in, you are telling someone where you are and the network will have that information in its storage of data on your activity.

Also, with applications on smartphones (Apple or Android) remember that many of those applications ask you to let them access your location through location services setting on the phone.  Think about that before you authorize such use.  It may make some sense to let the application know where you are when you want to get directions from that location to somewhere else.  What about knowing the weather?  That seems logical, but you can always enter in applications like The Weather Channel app the location for which you want the weather information rather than let your phone tell them where you are in real time.  I have The Weather Channel app set to give me the weather in five or six different places around the world and I am not in all of them (or any of them) simultaneously.

Go to the Settings menu on your phone and go through the applications to see which ones have location services turned on.  Decide (a) whether you need the application at all (our phones are often bloated with applications that we do not use; I am slowly trying to get rid of them) and (b) does it make any sense at all for the application to know where you are?

Also, while it is comforting to know that there is an application that can find your smartphone if it is lost or stolen (or down beneath the cushions on your couch), you may want to consider turning off your smartphone completely from time to time --- for purposes of privacy and just plain old peace and quiet.

Spear Phishing

Marketplace Tech Report ran a story today about the detection of  renewed cyber attacks by the Chinese military against United States government and corporations.  These attacks resumed after a three-month lull.  Earlier this year such attacks drew much publicity, particularly after the Chinese tried to hack into not only American government computers but also major American media computers.

The Marketplace Tech story, however, focused on "spear-phishing", a hacking technique used to gather personal password and gain access to private information.  It involves targeting individuals by email.

Chester Wisniewski, a computer security expert with Sophos and a frequent contributor to Marketplace Tech reports, explained:

 When somebody singles you out as an individual to target with an attack, we call it "spear phishing". They find some way of convincing you that they are the target brand and get you to type in your password and give it to them.

You may have seen email like this, even if you have a spam filter.  I poses as a message from a legitimate website, like your bank or credit card company, saying that a security issue has arisen or a major purchase has been made.  It then directs you to click on an embedded link to obtain more information or contact the company.

This may be easy to spot if you do not have an account with the bank or credit card company, but the email is designed to play on our temptation to contact someone immediately to find out if there is a problem or if someone has used our identity to make purchases on our accounts.  It is playing on our own insecurities in the digital age and our desire to correct things immediately.

If you get an email like this, DO NOT CLICK ON ANY LINK WITHIN IT.  If possible do not open the email; view it in a viewer or reader before opening or scan it with a security program.  The embedded links take you to a website that looks like a real bank or business site, but is designed to get you to enter your username and password.  If you do, YOU have been SPEARED.  The bad guys now have your username and password and can start creating real mayhem with them.

If you want to contact legitimate site for this type of email, do it by going to the site using your computer browser and typing in the URL for the site (or looking up customer service for the company online and going to the site).  Or, call the company.  Remember that the customer service contact information for credit card companies and banks is usually on the back of their credit or debit card.   Do not use the links in the email!

And to end with a final reminder:  change or otherwise secure your user names and passwords!  If you have a lot of them, try using a computer service like Last Pass to keep track of them for you and help you change them frequently. 

Spam, Spam Spam; Digital Afterlife - Google-style

Here are some late breaking (April, 2013) additions to Reality Bytes.

Spam, Spam, Spam ...

This post is especially short, because the source for it is Peter Lewis, and he is a much better writer and it is his personal story.  In the wake of the bombings at the Boston Marathon on April 15, Peter began encountering new waves of spam which set his blood to boil.  One particularly distasteful and macabre batch used the tragedy in Boston to entice readers.  After a teaser message, readers were given a link to further information.  Clicking on a link would result in malicious software being loaded onto the computer.  Another wave involved email received through Facebook.  By referencing one person that Peter knew, the Facebook email tried appear legitimate -- an extension of Facbook's "friend of a friend" connectivity designed to build ever wider circles of interaction among users.  The Facebook email, however, also contained a malicious link.  Peter dashed off a hasty post to his Facebook friend:   “Friends don’t let Facebook friends spam other Facebook Friends." You can read Peter's full, much more colorful story in his column Words & Ideas at www.peterlewis.com or at this link. 

Planning Your Digital Afterlife -- Google-style

I have written before about the digital footprint that we all are creating and will leave behind when we die.  Examples:  Personal information, photographs and other memorabilia on Facebook or other social media, customer accounts with online services like iTunes or Amazon, playlists on Spotify, and personal files stored in the "cloud" that may back up everything from personal journals to your banking and tax records.  Not to mention the digital archive of email, Twitter posts, listservs, and blogs like Reality Bytes.  There are significant issues over who controls all this after you are gone.  There are contractual agreements with providers of these services in cyberspace.  Some states have enacted statutes to establish who has authority over and rights to these digital remains.  Maryland is considering such legislation.

Now, one of the most significant players in this domain, Google, has set forth a policy that it labels: "Plan your digital afterlife with Inactive Account Manager".  Google begins this policy statement by saying:

Not many of us like thinking about death — especially our own. But making plans for what happens after you’re gone is really important for the people you leave behind. So today, we’re launching a new feature that makes it easy to tell Google what you want done with your digital assets when you die or can no longer use your account.

What follows is really the introduction to an application, the aforementioned Inactive Account Manager (" not a great name, we know"), which enables Google users to make decisions about what data Google will delete or deliver to trusted contacts.  Giving you some idea of the scope of this application, Google states that this services covers:

data from some or all of the following services: +1s; Blogger; Contacts and Circles; Drive; Gmail; Google+ Profiles, Pages and Streams; Picasa Web Albums; Google Voice and YouTube.

"Inactive" is certainly an interesting euphemism for death, but Google has a verification warning before it will do anything with your information.  It will send a text message to your cellphone and an email to your secondary address provided to Google.  You may have noticed, as I did, a recent prompt from Google when you logged in asking you to update, verify or provide a cellphone number and a secondary email address.  There is sort of leap of faith here that you have both a cellphone and a secondary email address, but it is probably the most reasonable approach.

I would urge all readers to check out Inactive Account Manager and post any comments or questions online at this blog.

POSTSCRIPT:
I actually went and set up the Inactive Account Manager for my Google services, which include this blog.  This took about 10 minutes.  It involves choosing some preferences and providing information on how you want Google to try and contact you if you have not used your account(s) for the period of time that you have chosen and on who you want to have access to your digital remains on the Google services mentioned above.  You need a cellphone number that Google can text and an email by which Google can contact the trusted digital caretakers for your data.


This may not mesh perfectly with the legal administration of your estate, but Google seems to have provided a fairly simple method for users to handle a portion of their digital afterlife.