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I heard a very interesting program yesterday on Spanish radio about “digital wills.” Think about it.

Obviously, there’s a lot of crabapple Luddites on FR who, despite the fact that their major contact with the world is through FR, an electronic means, hate things like FB.

I don’t use it much except to communicate with family, close friends and a couple of international organizations of which I am part. I never use Twitter, but I’m rethinking that because it’s a good news source. However, I also have a couple of blogs, one of which I maintain for an organization.

So if I drop dead tomorrow, who is going to deal with my digital remains? Apparently you can now appoint an executor in your will to deal with things like this, but the law on it is still pretty unclear.

This level of digital media is very recent, and relatively few of the young users have had to confront mortality at this point. But think about it, guys: think how many posts you’ve made since you joined FR, think of all the work JR has done in maintaining this site. So don’t scoff, this is an important and unprecedented question.

I heard a very interesting program yesterday on Spanish radio about “digital wills.” Think about it. So if I drop dead tomorrow, who is going to deal with my digital remains? Apparently you can now appoint an executor in your will to deal with things like this, but the law on it is still pretty unclear.

That is an interesting question that goes beyond social media accounts like Facebook or even FR.

I went 100% digital some years ago as in I do all my banking and bill paying on-line and even file my taxes electronically. I don’t get any bills, nor any bank statements in the mail and prefer it that way. I keep my bank balance and reconciliation in a password protected Excel spreadsheet. I don’t even print much of anything out but instead save email notifications of bill payments for a few months, and even copies of my tax returns and other financial docs are saved digitally or scanned into a PDF and the paper docs shredded, all password protected in a hidden folder.

So if I were die tomorrow (and I’m not getting any younger) unless my executor (who is my nephew) had the password and PIN to even get into my laptop in the first place and then the user names and passwords for all my various accounts, he would have a hard time even knowing what bills I had (other than the two CC's I have in my wallet), the account numbers, who needed to be contacted or paid from my estate, etc. I am guessing he could contact my bank and provide them with a DC and a doc showing he was executor and go from there but it wouldn’t necessarily be easy.

If he could get into my laptop, and I’m sure he or some talented IT person could break in, he’d have access to my FB and FR accounts because I’m never logged out.