Preparing for digital death

Barbara Rainwater was excited to hear her old college sorority was holding a reunion and, naturally, wanted to track down her best friend from 40 years ago to see if they could go together.

They'd been pledge sisters and appeared in each other's weddings, initially staying close after college. But, as happens over time, their connection dwindled. So last month, when Rainwater used Facebook to contact her pal who lived in San Diego, she was completely unprepared for what she found.

"I got on her page and the first entry was, "I miss you terribly," says the Walnut Creek, Calif., resident. "I wondered where she was. By the third entry, someone wrote 'Rest in peace."'

Her friend had died in August, and her Facebook page had become a memorial.

"It was devastating," Rainwater said, choking up. At first she felt terribly guilty about not staying in contact. On the other hand, she reasoned, it could have been worse.

"When I calmed down, I thought, 'Well, at least I know."'

In today's plugged-in world, it's beginning to feel only natural to discover via Facebook that an old friend has died. But that possibility wasn't something many users or creators considered as social media took off. And the subject of death in the world of social networks is raising new questions. What do you do with a loved one's digital holdings like posts, blog items and photos? How long should those items, or even memorial pages, remain floating around the Internet? And what legal rights do survivors have in dealing with these affairs?

The questions are so numerous and confusing and painful that a cottage industry has sprung up to help those who must grapple with them.

"The modern era of the Internet is transformational," says Jeremy Toeman, the CEO and founder of San Francisco-based Legacy Locker, which helps customers get their loved ones' digital affairs in order. "No one has really thought it through. It shouldn't be up to Facebook or Twitter to decide what to do (with your holdings). It should be up to you."

Yet there seem to be very few rules or instructions indicating when the accounts get shut down and who controls that decision. And the rules that are in effect are usually in the fine print presented when you initially sign on as a member, and which few people read.

Sometimes the terms give the deceased's legal representative, such as the spouse or the executor of the estate, control over the accounts, says Rebekah Jackson Sapirstein, a San Francisco-based attorney specializing in estate planning and trust and probate matters. "For instance, Gmail allows the legal representative to take control of the account after death. However, they require a court order to prove you are the legal representative, which people in California with a trust would not normally need."

But, says Jackson Sapirstein, even when the deceased person has a legally established representative, they would still have to go to court.

"In California, if a person has created an estate plan and a trust, the trustee is the person appointed to handle the deceased person's assets without court intervention," she says. "It would take months and considerable expense for a trustee to get a court order just to access someone's e-mail account."

In other words, the providers — from Gmail to Twitter — hold most of the decision-making power.

That power may nullify the question of when does the page of a deceased person go from being a tribute to being morose. Facebook, for example, continues to run ads on those pages, so there's little incentive for them to shut one down.

Facebook spokeswoman Meredith Chin referred questions to a Facebook blog that explains how the concept of memorial pages came about. It explains that friends or family of the deceased person can contact Facebook, which will then "memorialize" the page. That means the person disappears from the "suggestions" box, and privacy settings are changed so only the deceased person's friends can access the page. Facebook also removes sensitive details, such as contact information and status updates. Memorializing the account also prevents anyone — even a proxy — from logging on to it in the future.

The blog doesn't say anything, however, about when or if the page may be taken down. The example it uses — of a Facebook employee who died, which prompted the discussion of memorial pages — happened in 2005. That person's page is still up, according to the blog.

Which isn't necessarily a bad thing.

Julz Berkowitz says a tribute page to a good friend who died in December has helped her "tremendously" in getting through her grief. She looks at the page at least once a day.

"If it wasn't for Facebook, I wouldn't have anything," says the Pacheco, Calif., resident, who hadn't seen her friend for two years but kept in contact through the site. "I've been able to correspond with other people who spent time with him the past couple years. I wouldn't have that without Facebook."

Meanwhile, entrepreneurs have seized the opportunity to help loved ones steer through the legal questions by giving people the opportunity to leave digital wills.

The idea came to Legacy Locker's Toeman nearly two years ago in the middle of a turbulent flight. An online consultant, he owned more than 100 web domains. He blogged and had social network accounts. He had thousands of pictures of his children on photo-sharing site Flickr. And, if the plane were to crash, his wife would be stuck without passwords to get access to any of it.

"When the plane landed," Toeman says, "I called my business partner and said, 'Let's do this."'

Legacy Locker serves those looking ahead by keeping track of accounts, passwords, and instructions on what to do with digital assets when a person dies or becomes disabled. It's essentially a digital safety deposit box where for $29.99 a year, or a one-time $299 fee, one can also store backups of important documents, or even videos meant to be viewed after the user passes. Account holdings are passed to a named beneficiary.