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Wednesday, February 21, 2007
Law - Email accounts and death
The Sidney Australia Morning Herald has an interesting article today titled "Life after death: Your email account may very well survive you but that's where the problems begin." Some quotes:
If you've got a web-based email account and a mobile phone, and you're under 50, chances are you don't have a physical address book. So if you suddenly died, would your partner or parents know how to contact your friends to let them know?The article then helpfully goes through the policies of Yahoo, Hotmail, and Google.Gaining authorised access to someone else's email is a complicated issue. First, there's the privacy of the people whose messages are in your account to consider and this is something the email providers take very seriously. There's also the issue of whether you actually want your family to read your old angst-ridden emails or reminders of ill-considered love affairs long since passed. Timeliness is also important as the main players in the free email game tend to erase all records if the account hasn't been used in a while - sometimes in as little as one month, which isn't a lot of time when people are dealing with grief and trying to sort out someone's estate.
For more, see this comprehensive article titled "Email after death" in Office Watch.
Posted by Marcia Oddi on February 21, 2007 05:03 PM
Posted to General Law Related