(TW) Your Digital Content After You Pass Away (SSP)

ssp
tw
#1

Conversation came up the other day where my TV was asking how she would know all the accounts and stuff she would need access to if something happened to me.

My TV’s brother nearly died a few years back (before we were together) and it was up to them to contact companies to put accounts on hold, or try and sort out bills and close or put accounts on hold. For most of the cases it was a very difficult process where they’d often demand to speak to the account holder even though the account holder was in a coma. It was an unnecessarily traumatic for the whole family as you can imagine.

This morning I just noticed a setting on my GMail account where you can leave a benefactor in the event of something happening to me: https://myaccount.google.com/inactive

Are there other things like this? It’s one of those things that’s never the top priority and there’s never a good time to get it sorted, but I was wondering if it’s something other people had considered and was wondering if it’s something you’ve done and had any tips.

#2

Hmm interesting.

I remember once thinking I would need to give my mum all those logins in the event of my death but my mate told me companies would release the data to her automatically. I didn’t consider comas.

I hope your TV’s brother is okay now, btw.

#3

Oh yeah, he’s all fine now thanks, should have mentioned that!

#4

Found this for Facebook

https://www.facebook.com/help/1568013990080948

#5

Balonz to my wife, LaszloPanaflex goes to my son and my sister gets Clapham_Giles.

#6

I gave my parents a few passwords and stuff and told them where to look for important docs in the event of anything bad happening. They didn’t take it very seriously at all, didn’t take any notes and tried to put my important passwords (that were on a post it note) on the fridge.

#7

I’ll just make sure they throw the external hard drive in the fires of Mount Doom

#8

For my social media accounts my TV is under strict instructions to post pretending to be my ghost threatening vengeance on all my enemies for at least 5 years after I pass.

#9

Guys email will soon be gone after Brexit. Just shout messages at people to communicate and tell your cat anything you need to keep safe. Cats cannot talk and this is therefore encrypted

#10

There’s an episode of How I Met Your Mother where this is discussed at some length, where one character treats it like writing a will - putting together a list of logins and passwords the other person can access should they need to. Makes sense. I’ve just checked, my mother-in-law’s FB page is still active, and my father-in-law posted on it a few weeks ago, the anniversary of her death. Her Netflix profile is still there too - it’s kind of weird seeing it every time I log in. I don’t really have any assets so haven’t sorted out a will, but should get on life insurance and admin stuff like that.

I remember also in Coupling they explained the concept of a porn buddy, who would go to your home in the event of your death and destroy your stash of grot, but who has physical porn collections these days.

#11

How many bytes? Depends where you tickle it!!

#12

There’s an emergency access section in Lastpass I’ve just discovered.

Found it in this article

#13

Yeah, it’s a difficult thing to take seriously as people would prefer not to know about it, but not sorting it doesn’t affect you, it affects the people close to you.

#15

The SSP didn’t seem to work very well, which is probably my own fault.

#16

It’s a really weird thing, the digital afterlife. My cousin has passed but his steam account is still alive and it tells you how many days since they last logged in. So I get a sad reminder every time I look at my friends list. It normally counts in years now but every now and again it’ll revert to day format for some reason and I can see exactly how many days we’ve been without him. Breaks my heart every time.

Also him and his wife used his xbox 360 as a dvd player. It logged him in every time she turned it on and she did nothing but watch movies and stuff in the days after (which is obvs fair enough) so I kept seeing his gamertag flash up as she turned it on and have a weird pang of hope whenever I saw it. That was hard to deal with.

Not sure if any of that is strictly relevant to the thread now I think about it.

#19

When my dad died we didn’t try to get into any of his accounts, and just wrote to places like the bank etc informing them of his death, it worked out finr. I’ve given my family strict instructions to throw all my stuff away, I’d die all over again if they saw my cringe poetry in my drafts folder

#20

Yeah, I think that over time this sort of thing is getting better and we’ll look back at horror with it all as a more tech-savy generation get older and this becomes more common.

#21

Edit : Redacted - missed the SSP. Sorry.

#22

It’s all good, I’m not that bothered, but it’s a pretty difficult subject for some people to talk about and making jokes about it all is natural.

#23

Am I missing something, I can’t see why you’d want anyone to access your FB, GMail, etc. once you’ve popped off.