The Real Battle for Data Privacy Begins When You Die
In a new book, Swedish academic Carl Öhman argues that tech companies have no incentive to be responsible caretakers of our posthumous digital footprint.
Policies on posthumous data are a largely unacknowledged frontier in data privacy, an academic argues.
Photographer: Jaap Arriens/NurPhoto/Getty Images
In 2012 a 15-year-old girl died in Berlin after being hit by a subway train. Her bereaved parents asked Facebook to turn over her private messages in hopes of understanding whether her death was a suicide or an accident.
Facebook refused. Her death had already been reported to the social media site, which then converted her profile to a “memorialized account.” According to the company’s policy at the time, no one could access memorialized accounts, even with a password. After years of lawsuits and appeals, Germany’s highest court in 2018 ordered Facebook to turn over the profile.