From family photos stored on the cloud to social media posts cataloging life鈥檚 pivotal moments, to music, art and stories we create and share online, the digital world is infused with representations of who we are.
What happens to that digital legacy after we die, and how do we manage the virtual heirlooms our loved ones leave behind?听
CU Boulder鈥檚 new Digital Legacy Clinic听has answers.
鈥淲hether you are making plans for your own passing or maybe you have lost a loved one and are dealing with their digital affairs, it can be an overwhelming process at a time of life that is already really hard,鈥� said clinic founder Jed Brubaker, an associate professor of Information Science. 鈥淲hat you are supposed to do and how to do it is not always clear and, unfortunately, most tech platforms don鈥檛 have systems in place to help. That鈥檚 where we step in.鈥�
Digital Legacy Clinic Founder Jed Brubaker (second to the right) talks with students (left to right) Daniel Sullivan,听 Rory O鈥橣lynn, Dylan Thomas Doyle听and Jack Manning. (Credit: Patrick Campbell/CU Boulder)
Launched this month, the first-of-its-kind clinic operates similarly to a pro-bono law clinic, with specially trained Information Science students providing free advice and troubleshooting for the public.
As Brubaker points out, the average internet user has as many as听, from Google drives loaded with cherished snapshots to Pinterest accounts containing favorite recipes and Ancestry.com accounts tracing family trees back for generations. Yet, according to one forthcoming paper from his lab, only 13% of platforms have features expressly designed to address the end-of-life needs of their users.
鈥淐ompanies think about designing for all kinds of different aspects of our lives, from birthdays to wedding anniversaries,鈥� he said. 鈥淏ut they have overlooked perhaps the most profound one of all, which is when those lives come to an end.鈥澨�
Why you need a plan
In 15 years of studying what he calls 鈥榯he digital afterlife,鈥� Brubaker has uncovered a host of heartbreaking reasons it鈥檚 worth making an end-of-life plan for our data. Facebook pages鈥攍eft inaccessible to anyone but their creator鈥攃an linger long after that person has died, leaving algorithms to send eerie birthday notifications or 鈥渕emories鈥澨齮o grieving loved ones.听
7 ways to preserve your digital legacy
Have a plan听in place before you die. Even a simple plan is better than none.
Use built-in features听like Facebook鈥檚 Legacy Contact (which Brubaker鈥檚 research inspired), to designate a postmortem steward who can memorialize and manage your social accounts. Apple also has a Legacy Contact feature and Google provides support through its Inactive Account Manager feature.听
Start small.听Rather than crafting a comprehensive inventory of all accounts, start with one or two that mean the most to you.听
Focus on the content.听If you鈥檙e feeling overwhelmed, focus on the most important data first. Many people start with digital photos or social media and then expand outwards from there.
Identify someone you trust听to put in charge and tell them why it is important that you want those accounts preserved.
Share your passwords with that person.听This can help, but with the advent of biometric authentication (through fingerprints or facial recognition) and two-factor authentication (which sends a text to users before letting them into their account) this can get complicated when the user has died.
Tell your family what you want:听Family and friends want to respect your wishes and not knowing what you want can be stressful.听
Family members without passwords frequently hit roadblocks when trying to access photos or videos from the deceased鈥檚 Google or iCloud storage accounts.
Original art, music, stories or professional work shared via digital platforms or personal websites can be deleted and lost forever if unaccounted for.
And the sheer volume of data can be daunting for the those tasked with sorting through it after someone dies.
鈥淚f grandma dies and you have to sort through her attic, at least you know where the attic is, you know where the key is and you know where the attic ends,鈥� said Brubaker. 鈥淲hen it comes to our digital spaces, they are almost infinite. We keep putting more and more stuff in there and while some of it matters, some of it doesn鈥檛.鈥�
Because tech companies, by nature, tend to have minimalist customer service departments, surviving family members often face endless hold times and unanswered messages, exacerbating their grief.
鈥淥ur analysis revealed that most platforms offer minimal functional support and that many end-of-life needs are impossible to meet or rely on unsanctioned workarounds,鈥� said Dylan Thomas Doyle, a former hospital chaplain-turned doctoral candidate and clinic service provider.听
Working the workarounds
After years of studying such problems, Brubaker turned to a colleague a few years ago to wonder aloud if there was an organization that helped people through this process.听
鈥淎s I was saying it, I realized it: 鈥極h. We are that group. We need to create this.鈥欌��
With a $550,000 National Science Foundation CAREER Grant, he got to work, developing a new class that information science students (a blend of technology and behavioral science) helped build the clinic from the ground up.听
To prep for the launch, they have taken sensitivity training, consulted with lawyers and dug into the technical intricacies of dozens of platforms. They鈥檝e also handled a few dozen cases already.听
In one, they helped a grieving widow preserve her late husband鈥檚 blog about his long battle with cancer. In another, they helped a mother who had lost her daughter to suicide stay connected to her memorialized Facebook account after a technical glitch kicked her off.
鈥淚t鈥檚 been a really powerful experience to hear their stories and be able to help them,鈥� said graduate student Daniel Sullivan.
Classmate Rory O鈥橣lynn, an artist, said that being part of the clinic has prompted her to reflect on how she would want her own legacy preserved.
Would she want to have her Instagram profile memorialized so her friends could visit it? Who in her family would get the password to access her sketches?
鈥淭he younger generation, especially, has this perception of the internet as kind of the whole world. We leave all these digital footprints out there, but the average citizen isn鈥檛 thinking about this at all.鈥�
Love letters
The clinic does not provide advice on financial matters鈥攍ike how to access bank accounts or retirement funds. Fortunately, the designers of those systems have thought through what happens after someone dies, and there are policies and laws in place to help ensure their end-of-life needs are met, Brubaker听said.
In a sense, the personal stories, family histories and cultural heritage embedded in our virtual heirlooms are even more valuable than material ones, he said.
He and his students hope their听research and the new clinic will inspire tech companies to do more to preserve these digital treasures.
鈥淥ne hundred years from now I hope no one cares what my bank account number was.听听But those text message threads鈥攍ike modern-day love letters鈥攐r Instagram posts congratulating you on your wedding. Those matter. It would be a tragedy if all that is lost. We鈥檙e here to make sure that doesn鈥檛 happen.鈥�
