Don't become a Facebook zombie. Get your online affairs in order. Joanna Shears has been fasinated with death since childhood.
Joanna Shears. Joanna Shears has everything to live for. But the 3. 4- year- old is already fixated on death. Shears is an accomplished artist and taxidermist. Sometimes, she marries her interests in elaborate video installations that are meditations on how our lives end. She maintains a blog, The Winding Sheet, where she discusses funerals, cemeteries and "death positivity," the idea that improving your outlook on the inevitable might help you enjoy the present. Given her preoccupation, it's no surprise Shears has begun thinking about her own demise.
Three years ago, Shears stumbled across Dead. Social, an online service for managing the digital afterlife and sending messages to loved ones. The service, she thought, was the smartest way she could wrangle her roughly 5. I haven't written a will because I don't feel like I've got anything to leave to anybody," Shears told me from her home in London. All I've got to leave is shitloads of photos, and that is an asset and something I really care about." Bite the dust. Buy the farm. Push up daisies. It doesn't matter what you call it, everyone needs to prepare for the Big Sleep.
With more and more of our lives taking place online, that's become increasingly difficult to do. Think about how many email accounts you have. Who will corral those when you're gone?
Not so long ago, relatives, estate executors or lawyers might comb through someone's home after he or she kicked the bucket. They'd poke through the mail, maybe fish out an electric bill or bank statement.
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They'd find a subscription to a magazine or a fruit of the month club. Eventually, they'd put together enough leads to wind down someone's obligations. The internet has turned the paper trail into virtual confetti.
Sure, it's not hard to find someone's Facebook, Linked. In and Twitter accounts. You might even be able to guess a password or two. But you won't guess them all, and even if you could you might be breaking the law; in many places accounts can't be legally accessed by anyone other than the holder.
All that gray area creates the potential for Twitter, Facebook, email and other accounts to sit stranded online in a state of suspended animation. At best, they'll be creepy reminders every time they prompt friends and family to wish a happy birthday to the departed. At worst, they'll keep important assets, like bank balances, locked away.
Click here for "Logging Out," a look at death in the digital age. Statistics on zombie accounts are hard to come by, but some simple math suggests a lot of cyberspace is haunted. More than 2. 6 million Americans died in 2. CDC's latest numbers, and roughly 8. US adults are on the internet, according to the Pew Research Center. Given that password manager Dashlane estimates the average user has 9.
The problem is only going to get worse. Older people - - you know Gen Xers and baby boomers - - have fewer online accounts than millennials, analysts say. And, no surprise, the younger crowd is more apt to use social media, with 9. Pew says. The proliferation of accounts isn't necessarily a problem. The problem is that less than half of Americans have wills, according to Gallup, and a standard will isn't likely to cover digital property. We're in for a tidal wave," said Karin Prangley, a wealth manager at Brown Brothers Harriman who specializes in estate planning. As millennials age and start dying, it's going to create a nightmare for their executors, who are legally responsible for settling their affairs.
It's not like 'oh, I'll give it my best shot' and you hang up the towel and say 'I hope I got everything,'" Prangley said. Estate planning 2. Everyone should get around to inventorying their online accounts, and recording what should be done with them, says Jim Lamm, a third- generation estate planner who also writes the Digital Passing blog about the intersection of estate planning and the online world. Lamm says you should also keep track of any data you have in the cloud, which he recommends backing up to a hard drive. No surprise, he advises working with an estate planning attorney so that your loved ones have documentation of what you want to happen. If you've died, it's a little hard to give your consent unless you've planned ahead," Lamm said. Of course, plenty of DIY approaches are available for those who prefer a hands- on tack.
Big services - - think Facebook, Google and Twitter - - offer different settings for handling your accounts and data. People are finding ways to memorialize loved ones online. GODONG / BSIP, UIG via Getty Images.
Google's Inactive Account Manager lets you make plans for what you want to happen to your account after a certain period of inactivity, say a year. Facebook lets you set a legacy contact to manage your memorialized page. Twitter requires documentation that you've died. So, there's not much you can do about that in advance.
If you need more, a cottage industry has sprung up to fill in the spaces. Memorialize. Me, for example, sends prewritten or recorded messages after someone dies, stores documents, creates an online memorial and saves contacts. Afternote rounds up your social media accounts and lets you specify what you want done with them, as well as creates farewell wishes and a timeline of your life. Perpetu offers similar services and downloads information, such as your Facebook timeline, tweets and Linked.
In connections. Each of the services works a little differently, but they're essentially variations on a theme: Designate someone to notify the service you are no more and they'll start sending out messages and shutting down your accounts. Some, like Memorialize.
Me and Afternote are free. Others have pricing plans. Perpetu is $1. 0 a year or $9. Rocket Lawyer, a monthly subscription service that starts at $3. Legal affairs. Why is all the planning important? Because companies like Google, Microsoft and Facebook all have different policies.
That's compounded by federal and state laws that prohibit them from sharing your data without consent. In some ways, the law is still being hammered out. Lamm and a colleague co- authored the Uniform Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act, which would harmonize US state and federal privacy laws. About half the states have adopted a revised version. Lamm says the laws are so new, it's too early to tell the effect. That also means law surrounding the issue is taking shape abroad as well, Prangley says.
Fake Facebook Profiles and Pages – the Tools of Scammers, Bullies and Thieves Imitation is said to be the sincerest form of flattery, but that is hardly the case on Facebook. We receive countless reports from people and page administrators that have had their profiles or pages copied by scammers or bullies. The most common scenario is someone copies the name, profile picture and other available photos of their intended victim. The next thing they do is block the person they are impersonating and send friend requests to everyone on the victim’s friends list. This is done to infiltrate their social network. Once this part of the mission is complete, the scammer has a variety of options at their disposal. They can: Data mine the accounts they have friended under the bogus profile.
Even if you have your privacy and sharing options set to ‘Friends Only,’ you are still at risk if you accidentally accept a duplicate friend request. Gather enough information and target close friends and family members with something called the ‘Grandma Scam.’ The scammer contacts people close to the victim and tells them that they are in trouble of some kind, usually stranded on vacation, arrested or in some other legal trouble, etc. This is accompanied by an urgent plea to send money ASAP via Western Union. Spam scam links to everyone on their friends list. This is a common social engineering tactic used by online fraudsters. The goal is to use the trust of the victim’s social circle to make the scam more believable. We have seen scam messages promoting diet pills, free gift cards and pleas directing people to check out photos and videos.
These are just a few examples.)Unknown con artists aren’t the only ones creating duplicate profiles and pages. Bullies often create fake profiles with the intention of humiliating or harassing their intended victim. If this happens to you, then we encourage you to report the incident to Facebook and contact your local law enforcement authorities. Most places have laws against online harassment and bullying.
What precautions can you take? If you receive a friend request from someone you are already friends with, don’t confirm the request until you verify it with your friend. Contact them by some other means – phone, email, text, etc. Obviously, if you contact them via Facebook the scammer will lie. Profile pictures and cover photos are public by default, and this can’t be changed. Don’t post a photo of yourself that can be copied and used against you.
Use a generic photo or a photo of something that has meaning to you, but one that doesn’t contain your image. Make sure your privacy and sharing options are set appropriately so that people you aren’t friends can’t view your photos, videos, etc. Edit your friends list so no one else can see it. To do this, navigate to your Timeline and click the link to your friends list. Next, click the ‘Edit’ icon located to the far right below your cover photo. Finally, click the ‘Edit Privacy’ option and set the Friend List option to “Only Me.”What should you do if you are a victim?
Report the offending profile or page to Facebook. Below you will find the Help Center topics from Facebook that address this issue. Let your current friends know about the fake profile. This simple step can help keep your friends from friending the bogus account and can save you both a lot of trouble.
Contact your local law enforcement authorities. Most jurisdictions have laws in place against identity theft, harassment and cyber bullying. You may have to press the issue with them, because it isn’t uncommon for some agencies to avoid cases like this. Law enforcement agencies can subpoena or otherwise obtain information from Facebook that will help determine the identity of the person that created the offending profile. If you live in the U. S., then you can report the incident to The Internet Crime Complaint Center.
Other countries often have similar agencies, so contact your local authorities or do an Internet search to obtain this helpful information. Recommended Resources.
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