« Today in Tech; 3/15 | Main | CompUSA closing stores, Oliver’s dilemma »
DISCUSSION: What Happens To Your Data When You Die?
By Oliver Rist | March 16, 2007, 12:01 am
Sasquatch brought this up during a whiskey-inspired side discussion at the editorial retreat. Got me thinking because…well, I’ve never thought about it. What DOES happen to your data when you die?
I actually found a few articles & posts on the subject:
Turns out there are real procedures for this from online services like AOL, MSN and the like. They just need to verify that you’ve really passed on. And you can bet that your company’s IT guy will take care of your office PC.
But what about all that personal data on your PC (and I’m not just talking about nudie pix)? Bank info, tax records, coding projects and archives, your private journal, family photos, etc. Near as I can tell, data has no legal standing as an entity unto itself.
So if you go tits up, your PC just becomes another item on the list of stuff you’re leaving to relatives, friends, neighbors and pets. The only way your data gets consideration on its own is if you actually specify that in your will. I’ve got a friend who’s big into probate law, so I’m going to get the official word tomorrow.
Another scenario is folks who telecommute using their own workstations at home. When they croak, don’t their employers want access to that machine in case it has company data on it? Do they have an automatic right to that PC or should you fight them?
Meanwhile, I suppose I’ve got to think up a procedure for what to do with that three-quarters of a terabyte I’ve got floating around the house. And the backups.
Sasquatch mumbled something about a deadman switch he’s got rigged up on his systems. He’s probably bluffing since he’s too young and too drunk most of the time. But if I were setting something like that up, I’d have to keep my data tightly organized. All the stuff I want private, would have to be automatically deleted. And my executor would have to grab the backup tapes/CDs/cartridges/whatever and destroy those. All the stuff that should go to relatives–financial records, journals, specific emails and letters, etc.–would have to either get routed to the right recipients automatically or dumped to a file so the executor could find them.
When you think about it, that’s actually quite a bit of work. And you’d have to keep up with it pretty closely over time. Wonder if there are any products that handle this?
Topics: Social Tech, WTF? |
2 Responses to “DISCUSSION: What Happens To Your Data When You Die?”
Comments
You must be logged in to post a comment.
March 16th, 2007 at 10:34 pm
Well, I’m glad something finally got you thinking, especially after the tantrum you threw in public about ‘deleterious’ not being a word. Dumbass.
Yeah, setting up a deadman switch is very involved and certainly more than a non-geek can handle. I’ve never looked for any other software since a bunch of perl does a far better job for me than anything else. It’s not difficult to write the code, but it’s impossible to test.
Just another reason that the geek shall inherit the Earth. Or their offspring, anyway.
March 19th, 2007 at 12:38 am
Well. If you ever get drunk and set the clock on your NTP server forward a few months by mistake, you’ll find out if it works or not.