December 21, 2004
Privacy, email and dead people

This story opens up an interesting question. Are you still protected by privacy laws after you die and should you be?

On one hand you have the family who lost their son and only wish to have all that remains of his memory, on the other a man's legitimate assumption of privacy, dead or alive. To me, the answer is pretty clear. Had he wanted his family to have these emails, he would have either made the password known or sent the emails to them.

There is a second angle to this story that is not mentioned in the article. The soldier is dead, but what of the people he corresponded with? Do they lose a right to privacy once the recipient dies? Of course, yet another angle is can anyone legitimately claim email is private in the first place.

Before siding with the family, I think everyone should think of their most embarrassing email and then imagine their mom reading it. Yah, I thought so. Go Yahoo.

Posted December 21, 2004 05:40 PM in Random
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Comments
On December 21, 2004 06:07 PM Paul added:

Two thoughts:

First, when my mother died I simply called up AOL and explained the situation and they happily gave me her password. In fact, they were very upset that I wanted to cancel her account. Then again, that meant that they weren't getting money anymore. They expected me to keep using her account (and keep paying).

Second, well ... e-mail can be one of those embarassing things. Everyone should make a "death pact" with someone and trade passwords with them. Most people are familiar with this already - like "dude, if I ever die, find my computer and smash it to bits - I don't want my parents to find all that porn I downloaded." I know I've got my death pact all in place for e-mail as well.

"Dude, if I ever die erase my e-mail accounts right away!"

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On December 21, 2004 06:07 PM Paul added:

Two thoughts:

First, when my mother died I simply called up AOL and explained the situation and they happily gave me her password. In fact, they were very upset that I wanted to cancel her account. Then again, that meant that they weren't getting money anymore. They expected me to keep using her account (and keep paying).

Second, well ... e-mail can be one of those embarassing things. Everyone should make a "death pact" with someone and trade passwords with them. Most people are familiar with this already - like "dude, if I ever die, find my computer and smash it to bits - I don't want my parents to find all that porn I downloaded." I know I've got my death pact all in place for e-mail as well.

"Dude, if I ever die erase my e-mail accounts right away!"

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On December 22, 2004 07:33 AM pbw added:

As someone who does a lot of Genealogy research (and therefore I'm digging into a lot of Birth and Death records), I've got a little bit of a feel for this. Right to Privacy varies greatly from state to state. Some states have no right to privacy and others the right can extend for 10, 20, even more than 50 years!

I think whoever has control of his estate in his will (as a solider he was VERY likely forced to draw one up) be able to get the password to his account.

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On December 22, 2004 12:12 PM pbw added:

It seems a number of code-crackers are offering to help figure out the password.

http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/12/22/marine.killed.email.ap/index.html

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On December 22, 2004 05:02 PM Anon added:

>First, when my mother died I simply called up AOL and explained the situation and they happily gave me her password.

I hope AOL needed some form of verification - death certificate etc, otherwise what’s to stop anyone calling up to get passwords!

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