This article was published on November 17, 2010

Is there a digital life after death?


Is there a digital life after death?

Most of us have an ever expanding personal online digital footprint;  the words we’ve written, the comments we’ve made, the emails sent, the photos uploaded, the videos shared, the game credits earned and even the real money tied up in sites like Paypal.

Few of us, however, consider what should happen to all this data, our digital assets, when the inevitable comes and we die.

Should it all go to the great archive in the clouds or should it be dragged into the depths of the great trash can?

This concern is the subject of a new online sector, that of Digital Estate Planning.  New sites like My Webwill and Legacy Locker aim to address the issue by enabling online users to securely store online information like logins and passwords to be passed on to relations after death.

“People are only starting to comprehend the inherent value in digital assets, as more people make this connection, more will be in need of these services and hence, more companies will address the market”.  Jeremy Toeman, founder and CEO of Legacy Locker in an email interview with ZDNet Asia.

Of course, these companies are treating a serious issue, seriously.  On a slightly lighter note, The Next Web have already covered the E-Tomb, a Bluetooth enabled, solar powered gravestone concept that can store your social media life internally and deliver it to your grieving relatives’ mobiles, tweet by tweet, when they visit your grave.

Creepy? or not?  Let us know what you think, knock once on the table for a Yes, twice for a No.

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