Janice Collins continues to grieve over the loss of her only daughter Ericka after she was murdered four years ago.
"I miss her every day," says Janice Collins. "It's a never ending pain."
But she has since found comfort through social networking sites including a Facebook page set up in remembrance of her late daughter.
"It's been very helpful," said Janice.
However, Janice says she hit roadblocks attempting to gain access to Ericka's email.
"They told me it didn't matter that it was her privacy, and there was no way they were going to let me in there," said Janice.
"It's fascinating to see how digital technology is starting to affect the way that we experience death," said John Romano.
John Romano and Evan Carroll co-authored the book Your Digital Afterlife.
"We've really changed the way we live," said Evan Carroll. "We've moved into a digital society."
Carroll points out that many of us store our assets including tweets, blogs and family photos through online sites and not necessarily on a computer.
So now is the time to start thinking about how you'd like to preserve those memories.
"There are no physical or tangible assets that will be in a box for 50 years," says Romano.
So how should you prepare a digital will?
First take an inventory of all your online accounts. Then make a list of all your passwords.
Now you need to decide how you'd like to pass along this information to a trusted executor.
Services like Asset Lock and Data Inherit are password lockers to store that information. Both require a death certificate for your executor to access.
And if you decide not to lock away your pass codes, online accounts are governed by the terms of service that you enter with each provider.
"Google has a policy where if you come out and you are the executor and can provide a death certificate they will actually give you access to that account."
Facebook allows anyone to memorialize a profile, but you must provide a link to an obituary.
A memorialized page will only allows pre-existing friends to post on your wall. Otherwise your family can request the page to be deleted.
Twitter will give you the choice to leave the account in place or remove the account if notified that the user has passed away by death certificate.
The site will also bundle all archived tweets from that user and give that to the executor of the estate.
And, YouTube allows your heir to provide a death certificate and proof that the heir has the right to gain access and manage that existing account.
But what about your online music stored on sites like iTunes?
"iTunes is an interesting example, because you're not purchasing the file essentially you're purchasing the rights to listen to that music file," explained Carroll.
Which means heirs would need that password to continue managing the account.
FlickR, a site that stores online photos, is owned by Yahoo. The company's policy states it can delete inactive accounts.
Yahoo terms also say accounts are non-transferable and have no rights of survivorship.
"If a lifetime of photos on FlickR is lost, that can be really devastating to your family," Romano said.
A $10,000 reward is being offered for information on the murder of Ericka Brair. Anyone with information can place an anonymous call to the Citizens Crime Commissionat 215-546-TIPS.
Links:
The Digital Beyond: http://www.thedigitalbeyond.com/
Your Digital Afterlife: http://www.peachpit.com/store/product.aspx?isbn=0321732286
Your Digital Afterlife on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/#!/yourdigitalafterlife
Digital Estate Planning and Posthumous Email Services:
AssetLock http://www.assetlock.net/
DataInherit http://www.datainherit.com/en/home.html
Entrustet https://www.entrustet.com/
Death Man's Switch http://www.deadmansswitch.net/
Legacy Locker http://legacylocker.com/
My Web Will https://www.mywebwill.com/
Online Memorial Services
These services can be used to create a memorial for a loved one.
Bcelebrated http://www.bcelebrated.com/
1000Memories http://1000memories.com/
GoneTooSoon http://www.gonetoosoon.org/
Legacy.com http://www.legacy.com/NS/
