Handling your online legacy

When Evan Carroll's aunt asked him several years ago if he could take care of her online identity after she died, he soon realized it was not a simple request.

Her e-mail, Facebook account and other digital impressions were all managed and stored on servers that she didn't own.

"What's going to happen to this stuff?" he wondered. "Where's it going to go?"

Attempting to answer those questions has become an unexpected side career for Carroll and John Romano, colleagues who work for the Raleigh public relations firm Capstrat.

This year, the duo published "Your Digital Afterlife," a book that explores all the issues being raised by people living, and dying, in an increasingly digital world. They also have a website, www.thedigitalbeyond.com that has become a portal for resources and information about the topic.

Carroll, 24, and Romano, 39, will appear on a panel this morning at the annual South by Southwest music and media conference in Austin, Texas, to discuss what legal frameworks and standards should be adopted to protect people's digital assets after they are gone.

"People are just starting to consider this," Romano said. "Think about someone who's been online 30, 40 years."

Leaving it all behind

It is expected that more than 285,000 Facebook users will die this year, not to mention the users of other prominent social networking tools such as Twitter, YouTube, Gmail and Flickr.

People once left behind written letters. Today they are more likely to leave behind e-mail messages stored in password-protected accounts.

Who owns this content, and what happens to it after someone dies, are questions that are increasingly being raised. For many people, the first time they contemplate their digital afterlife is when they are confronted with the "ghost account" on a Facebook user who has died.

For others, it's when a friend or family member dies and they realize how difficult it can be to gain access to their e-mail, online photos, bank accounts or other items.

In their book, Carroll and Romano mention the case of a Marine whose father successfully took Yahoo to court in 2005 after his son died in Iraq and he was unable to access his e-mail account.

They also point out that, in addition to wanting to save digital assets, a person may want to ensure that online items are deleted after they are gone.

Gaining access

Yahoo's policy is to not give e-mail passwords to anyone other than the account holder. The company will terminate an account and the contents within it upon receiving a death certificate.

A number of online companies, including Facebook and Twitter, recently revised their policies about how to deal with the accounts of deceased users.

Facebook allows friends or family to "memorialize" an account, which prevents it from appearing in search results and makes it only visible to friends, who can leave posts on a profile wall. Users can now also download the content in their account.

Twitter allows for a deceased user's account to be closed, and his or her public tweets saved.

Google may allow access to a deceased user's Gmail account, but only after a person proves that he or she is the lawful representative of the estate or is the parent of the individual.

While companies are crafting their own individual policies, others are stepping in to offer services designed to organize and protect a person's digital assets. Called "digital asset services," these companies store digital content and passwords that provide a roadmap to finding and accessing information after a person passes away.

Storing passwords

Legacy Locker, a 2-year-old San Francisco startup, allows you to store user names and passwords in an online vault, and then identify beneficiaries who will follow your instructions after you die.

"It's an online will for your online identity," said Jeremy Toeman, 38, the company's CEO.

A free account allows you to store three digital assets and name one beneficiary. For $30 a year or a one-time fee of $300, a user can store unlimited assets and name as many beneficiaries as they wish.

Toeman said the company has about 10,000 accounts, though he declined to say how many were paid.

Carroll and Romano have thus far sold about 4,300 copies of their book. They've also been mentioned in the New York Times Magazine and appeared on National Public Radio's "Fresh Air."

They believe it's just a matter of time before attorneys and estate planners begin addressing the digital afterlife.

"There's this cultural shift going on," Romano said. "Everything we're doing is shifting online."