Digital Afterlife

As Technology Advances, Social Media Platforms Such As Facebook And Twitter Have Become An Integral Part Of Our Everyday Lives. But What Happens To Our Online Identities And Data When We Die? Daniel Bardsley Speaks To Industry Experts To Discuss Why We Need To Plan Our Digital Legacy.

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No one needs to be told that Facebook is popular in the UAE. One estimate suggests that around 7.5 million of the country’s 9.7 million residents use the social network, and some reports put the figure even higher.

Yet how many of these users have thought about what happens to their account after they pass away?

It may seem a distant concern, but a person’s continued online presence can have consequences for those they leave behind.

This is illustrated by the tragic case in the United Kingdom of Hollie Gazzard, a young woman who was fatally stabbed by her former boyfriend Asher Maslin in 2014.

For Hollie’s relatives, the task of trying to rebuild their lives after the killing was made all the more difficult by the continued presence on her Facebook profile of multiple photos of her with Maslin, all taken during happier times.

Despite pleas, Facebook initially refused to take the pictures down, and it was only when more than 11,000 people signed a petition calling for a change of heart that, in 2015, the social network removed the images.

As well as perhaps illustrating the power that big tech companies have over users’ data – even beyond the grave – the case demonstrates the long reach of a person’s “digital legacy”: individuals do not simply disappear online when they die.

The question of how people deal with this digital legacy has become an increasing talking point, but many feels that, still, it is too often ignored.

Four years ago, James Norris set up The Digital Legacy Association to highlight the issue and to assist people keen to manage what happens to their online presence after they are gone.

“For some people, their legacy planning might simply be passing on a password for their phone,” he says.