The Real Battle for Data Privacy Begins When You Die
The people we love will die, but their data will continue to live indefinitely, digital ghosts in the cloud.
At the moment, nothing is stopping the Metas and Googles of the world from exploiting them—or perhaps worse, erasing them permanently.
Facebook turns the death-reported account into a “memorialized account.”According to the company’s policy, no one could access memorialized accounts, even with a password.
Facebook’s “memorialized” accounts, which turn the profile into a tribute page where friends can visit and post, are designed to be static.
In 2015 the company added a feature that allows a user to arrange for a “legacy contact” to manage the page after the account holder’s death.
But the contact can’t log in or read messages; they can curate tribute posts or request that accounts be removed
Article link - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-04-09/carl-ohmans-the-afterlife-of-data-what-happens-to-your-data-when-you-die