When someone dies, what happens to their online property? (Image: Jack Hollingsworth/Getty)

WHEN tragedy strikes and a loved one is lost, the last thing a grieving family would think is “what’s to become of their Facebook page?” But for a growing number of people each year, dealing with digital belongings the deceased leaves behind – from their Twitter account to computer files stored remotely, in the cloud – is a difficult, messy task.

That’s why John Wightmann, a state senator in Nebraska, is drumming up support for a new state law that aims to make the process simpler. His bill would give a will’s executor automatic access to someone’s social media accounts so they can then decide whether to shut them down or run them as an online memorial. The only other US state with a similar law on the books is Oklahoma, which passed it in 2010.

“The law must keep up with technology,” Wightmann says. “At this point, it has not.”


Read more: “Forever online: Your digital legacy“

Most social networking sites have a policy to deal with the death of one of their users, but each one is different. Facebook lets family members convert a dead user’s page into a memorial page that is locked, but which lets friends and family write on the deceased’s wall. Twitter will delete a user’s account upon receipt of a death certificate. Neither service hands over any login or password details.

Gaining access to a person’s Gmail account, meanwhile, requires the next of kin to provide a death certificate and proof of an email conversation between the two. A failure by a bereaved relative to jump through all such hoops can have painful consequences – particularly when Facebook cheerfully reminds you to “reconnect” with a dead relative, as many have found.

A failure by a bereaved relative to jump through lots of hoops can have painful consequences

Potentially valuable digital assets are even trickier to deal with. They are not covered in wills, unless you have inserted a specific clause. And while a cash balance in your PayPal account may be cashed and then passed to the will’s executor, the non-transferable music files or movie collections that are sitting on your iTunes account occupy far more of a grey area.

“The worst thing you can do is nothing,” says solicitor Eleanor Gadd at the law firm Thomas Eggar in London. She advises people to appoint someone in their will to manage their digital legacy and give them access to all of their login details. “Otherwise [your digital assets] are lost and they are frozen and there’s nothing you can do about it,” she says.

Another way around this is to set up a digital will. Firms such as Entrustnet, Deathswitch, iCroak and Assetlock will act as your digital executor to manage your social media for you when you die. For $29.99 a year – or a one-off fee of $299.99 – Legacy Locker will take charge of your digital assets and social media accounts and only release the details to the person you have specified.

Meanwhile, progress with Wightmann’s bill is slow. It was put on hold last week after law-makers decided that social media firms needed more input, and that there were privacy issues that still needed to be resolved. Should the digital executor be able to automatically view all content within someone’s online profile, for example?

Whatever happens, a legal consensus is needed sooner rather than later, says Gadd. “As people grow up in this digital age and begin dying – it’s definitely going to become more of an issue.”