Or, at least, you can prevent people from having it after you’re gone. Went to a memorial service last night for one of the “patriarchs” in our parish. Among the…
Or, at least, you can prevent people from having it after you’re gone.
Went to a memorial service last night for one of the “patriarchs” in our parish. Among the pain his passing has caused his family, this is not probably part of it.
William Talcott, a prominent San Francisco poet with dual Irish citizenship, had fans all over the world. But when he died in June of bone marrow cancer, his daughter couldn’t notify most of his contacts because his e-mail account–and the online address book he used–was locked up.
Talcott, 69, a friend of beatnik Neal Cassady, apparently took his password to the grave.
It’s a vexing, and increasingly common problem for families mourning the loss of loved ones. As more and more people move their lives, address books, calendars, financial information, online, they are taking a risk that some information formerly filed away in folders and desks might never be recovered. That is, unless they share their passwords, which poses security threats.
“He did not keep a hard copy address book. I think everything was online,” said Talcott’s daughter, Julie Talcott-Fuller. “There were people he knew that I haven’t been able to contact. It’s been very hard.”
Margie knows the array of passwords that I use, so if something Awful were to happen, she could get into my e-mail and so forth. Indeed, I make use of some password repositories, so all she needs to know is how to get into those.
But if both of us went? There’s a lot of info I have that, potentially, nobody could get to.
Experts in the article suggest that part of someone’s estate planning documents include passwords — but that assumes those passwords don’t change (risky), and it provides an added risk, it seems, from folks having access to such documents (the same is true, in a somewhat lower tech fashion, in keeping your password in some sort of safe or lockbox). Another alternative is providing explicit permission (or power of attorney) to access certain data (e-mail accounts, for example) to given individuals,
heirs, executors, so that they can take that to the firms that have the accounts and receive userids/passwords. Without such permission, the providers, who are under a lot of privacy pressure, may not comply.
The situation poses a dilemma for e-mail providers that are pilloried by privacy rights advocates at the mere suggestion of sensitive data being exposed, at the same time they are expected to hand over the digital keys to family members when a customer dies. Last year, Yahoo was forced to provide access to the e-mail of a U.S. Marine killed in Iraq to his father, who
got a court order in the matter.
“The commitment we’ve made to every person who signs up for a Yahoo Mail account is to treat their e-mail as a private communication and to treat the content of their messages as confidential,” said Yahoo spokeswoman Karen Mahon. Beyond acknowledging that Yahoo complies with court orders, Mahon declined to discuss Yahoo’s requirements for providing family members access to the e-mail accounts of their deceased loved ones.
Google will provide access to a deceased Gmail user’s account if the person seeking it provides a copy of the death certificate and a copy of a document giving the person power of attorney over the e-mail account, said a Google spokeswoman.
America Online follows the same policy, according to spokesman Andrew Weinstein.
One more thing to think about.
(via Schneier)
