One of the things I struggle with most is describing the value of planing for your digital afterlife. I often get the response “but won’t I be gone?” It’s salient that a big opportunity in this space is a solution that provides both immediate and long-term (after death) value. It’s been out for a few months now, but the DataInherit Password Safe for the iPhone does just that.

The App makes it easy to sign up for an account and begin storing passwords almost immediately. Like other digital afterlife services, your passwords are kept securely and you can specific who receives access upon your death. I really like the idea of having this information readily available when I need a password and when I change one. Kudos to the DataInherit team for a great tool.

It happens. Computers left behind by a loved one become locked boxes. Accounts become frozen. Treasured digital assets are lost. Now a new service is available that helps survivors unlock digital content.

Digital Estate Services (http://www.digitalestateservices.com) is here to help. Their service can help unlock local files, recover user names and passwords for online accounts, and find important documents from a spouse or loved one’s computer in the event that they didn’t leave access.

A list of events at SXSW that all deal with digital identities and afterlife.

Virtual Interviews: A Chat With Darwin’s Ghost
#syntheticinterview
Ralph Vituccio and John Dessler
Carnegie Mellon Entertainment Technology Center
Synthetic Interview is a unique technology that allows people to have a conversation with a character or persona as if that person were present in real-time. The goal is creating immersive experiences, allowing guests to interact with a digital character from either the past, the present or the future.

People Die, Profiles Don’t
#peopledieprofilesdont
Jesse Davis with Entrustet
Talk about companies and how they deal with users deaths. What can websites do to streamline the process of handling the deceased’s wishes for their online accounts?

eSee Technologies
#eSeetech
Ian Mitchell
Augmented Reality device that may serve life loggers and average Web users alike at eseetechnologies.com.

I also saw this article that Apple has hired Richard DeVaul of AWare Technologies who is an expert in heads up technology. Can you say iSee?

What If Your Phone Had Five Senses?
#phonehad5senses
Ted Power of Google
The phone in your pocket has the sense of sight (camera), sound (microphone), touch and location. They also have sense of light, proximity, acceleration, orientation. All these senses potentially serve to describe your experiences and enrich your digital identity.

My Life, Take Two: The Right to Delete
#mylifetaketwo
Panel
Most of us have incidents in our past that we’d rather leave there – but that’s getting harder in a world teeming with tools and devices that capture our actions and record them forever. Do we have a ”right to delete” records and data about ourselves? Can we? Should we?

Have You Planned for Your Digital Afterlife?
Interview with Adel Mcalear
@DigitalLegacy

While doing some research recently, I started to think more about the  fields of study that together form a foundation for the digital afterlife.  I have always maintained that this is a multi-faceted topic, but I didn’t realize how true that statement was.

Identity – online content is a projection of our identity into the digital world.  E-mails, photos, connections and conversations provide a corpus of data allowing for unprecedented study and preservation of identity.

Human-computer interaction – the study of how we interact with computers.  Closely linked to identity, computers have become our companions in life.  They’re contents provide records of our thinking, communications and pleasures.

Estate planning – the traditional practice of law that helped individuals plan the disposition of their assets.  Our digital assets are becoming increasingly valuable.  It’s time for a legally-sound process to protect them and allow us to pass them along to the next generation.

Funeral service - end of life care and remembrance.  The way we remember and honor the decreased is changing.  Online memorials and gatherings are an increasing occurrence and are no less real than their offline counterparts.

Archives and preservation – archivists have worked for years to collect and preserve tangible information for centuries.  Now in an digital world they are working to collect and preserve not just physical, but “born digital” assets as well.

I’m sure that I missed a few.  Can you think of any others?  Comment it up, folks.

Many of you likely want to know what you can do to plan for your own digital afterlife. It’s something important to think about and we’re glad you’re here to get started.

Step one: Define your assets
A good first step is to inventory your online assets. Going through this process will not only result in a working list, the process will help you understand exactly how many assets you have. You’ll find more than you thought of beforehand.

Step two: Decide your wishes
Now that you have a list, go through it and decide what you would like to happen to each asset. Maybe you want it deleted, maybe you want it archived or perhaps you want it left alone. In any case, decide what you want to happen. It might also be a good idea to check the terms of service for any Web site for which you have a log in to see if they’ve already made some decisions for you.

Step three: Choose one or more executors
You won’t be around to push the buttons, so you’ll need a survivor to do it for you. Asking a trusted friend or relative to help is essential to having your wishes honored. Think about who is knowledgeable enough to help you out with your assets. Perhaps one person comes to mind or perhaps you want to divide tasks up amongst several people. We have more information about selecting executors here.

Step four: Document your wishes
Finally document your wishes and put them in a place that’s accessible by your executor(s). There are many online services that will help you out with this part. You may be able to do this yourself using a safe-deposit box or other security mechanism, but a service might make it easier or more secure for you. It’s important to think about how to best secure your information and passwords. Whatever you do, don’t list them in your will as that will become public record.

Of course, you’ll want to make sure you make these decisions carefully and with the input of your relatives. If you have any concerns it’s never a bad idea to consult your attorney.

With all of the conversation surrounding the digital afterlife, one thing is certain: you can’t deal with it by yourself.  You need a person or a service to help you. Services are popping up left and right, just check our (hopefully) comprehensive list. Still, for some things, you really need someone to help you out.  We (among others) have been calling this person a digital executor: a person whom you designate to execute your digital estate.

So, what makes a good digital executor?  As I see it, there are three critical components: trust, distance and capability.  I’ll address them in that order.

Trust

Seems pretty simple, right? In fact, it is.  You need to select someone who will respect your wishes and faithfully carry out your digital will. I don’t think there’s any more to say here.

Distance

Your executor needs to be close enough to you that you can trust them (see above), but needs to be somewhat distanced from you for a couple of reasons.  If you choose someone like your spouse or significant other there’s a greater chance that they will pass at the same time you do.  Then, of course, your digital will would not be carried out, unless you had others in place as well. It’s also important to have a person that will carry out your will without hesitation.  Those close to you may have trouble with deleting files or profiles (should that be your wish) in the name of preserving  your memory.

Capability

Finally, you should find someone who is up to the task and there are a few dimensions of this.  First, they should have access to your information.  However you choose to store you authentication information and wishes, they should be capable of accessing it.  Second, they should have the appropriate technical savvy.  Want your Facebook account deleted? You might want to choose someone who has a Facebook account.  Enough said.  Finally, they need to outlive you.  This goes back to distance, but you should think about age too.  When you’re young, someone from your own generation is likely suitable, but as you get older someone from the next generation may be more appropriate.

I’m sure there’s other considerations given your unique situation, but it’s my hope that this list will give you some helpful tips to get started.

According to CNET, Symantec is launching its Norton Online Living Calculator today, designed to determine the black market value of your online assets. The calculator asks questions about online finance, social networking and email accounts. The output is an estimated value of your personal information, which is substantially less than I imagined.  Mine was $10.59 a far cry from the $100.00 I estimated.

While The Digital Beyond isn’t particularly interested in selling you security software, the concept of assigning monetary value to online assets is of particular interest to us. If my information is only worth ten dollars on the black market, how valuable is it to my family after my death? Just consider your hourly wage and how many hours it might take to gather up your online assets. Even after weeks of effort they might not know about or gain access to everything.  I’d suspect that its worth more than ten dollars, and maybe more than the subscription fees for the growing list of digital estate services.

Norton Online Living Calculator

Seen today on CrunchGear and Gizmodo, this Japanese-developed device sends Tweets about your heartbeat. Despite scaring your relatives when Twitter is down, this device could lead the way for a “is ___ dead” service with a yes/no/unsure API. While this adds some biological fact to confirming one’s death, there’s several kinks like hospitalization or disconnected monitors that would introduce unreliability.

From the translated promotional video:

“Now I can die and post this info to Twitter. That’s what I call a revolution!”

Twitter Heartbeat Device

How many domain names do you have registered? I can think of at least five between mine and others I manage. If you were to pass before the registration expired, who would renew them? Remember that domain names aren’t property and you can’t really put them in your will. As I see it, and I’m not a lawyer mind you, there are two really simple options to protect them:

1. Set up a corporation, likely an LLC, and register your domain names through it. You can appoint a designee to take over the corporation and they’ll have relatively few issues gaining administrative control of your domains. In my opinion this plan is highly complicated, but is the most legally sound.

2. For those of us who don’t like to draw up legal documents in our spare time, allow me to suggest a more straightforward approach. First create a list of all of your registrars, DNS providers, hosting companies and the like. Record your usernames and passwords with this list. It’s important that you keep this list updated, by the way, because an old/expired password won’t be of much use. Now, dependent upon how much security you prefer you can either place this list in a secure location at home, or go and rent a safety deposit box at your local bank. Next appoint a technically minded designee whom you trust. Again dependent upon your security preferences, either provide them with the location of this list or specifically grant them the safety deposit box in your will. Make sure to set expectations with your designee and everything should go as planned.

I would suggest that you leave specific, written instructions with your designee. You may also be interested in providing messages for your online communities and friends that he could deliver on your behalf.

One thing you shouldn’t do is provide usernames and passwords in your will. It is a part of public record and can be viewed by anyone. Also, you should probably review your plans with your lawyer. As I said before, I’m not one and this information is provided as-is with no warranty expressed or implied. Feel free to use it as you wish, but my colleagues nor I are liable for any resulting damages.

So while mad scientists are busy making digital salvation possible, what can us mere mortals do to enable our digital footprint to outlive us? Well, in this lifetime I believe that people are going to start offering services that allow us to bundle up and archive our digital self.

If we think of that footprint as the total of all our online transactions (posts, comments, photos, videos, etc.) , then bundling up all the assets would provide a view of a person’s digital life.

Of course this issue is clouded by the very idea of ownership. Who owns a comment? Who owns the blog. For that matter, who really owns your Facebook or Flickr profile? You? Or the site? But regardless, the content is there. It’s accessible. It’s store-able.

The only question to consider is why?

We are at the beginning of a new age. Data storage gets cheaper by the day. It enables us to store incredible amounts of data. It is quite possible that whatever makes the leap to digital has a chance of remaining until the end of time.