Emails and death: Legal issues surrounding post-mortem transmission of emails

From Personal Data to Digital Legacy: Exploring Conflicts in the Sharing, Security and Privacy of Post-mortem Data

“…Our usage of the term is in keeping with the usage of Edwards & Harbinja, who use it to describe "the right of a person to preserve and control what becomes of his or her reputation, dignity, integrity, secrets or memory after death" [12]. However, while it may be considered a right by some, data protection regulations typically apply only to living individuals [19]. Furthermore, attempted post-mortem access to data that is stored according to the Terms of Service of an online provider may prove difficult, as many prohibit user assignment of rights and do not allow users to share login credentials [31].…”

“…[the] pensions opt-out means that more people are saving a pension than ever before -P8 Such a solution would introduce a range of privacy, technical, cyber-security and legal questions that are beyond the scope of this paper to discuss (see [19] for an argument against default transmission of email data). However, it also fails to solve some of the main problems associated with digital legacy planning.…”

Information science and the inevitable: A literature review at the intersection of death and information management: An Annual Review of Information Science and Technology (ARIST) paper

“…While broad legal solutions have been proposed and discussed (Carroll, 2013;Conner, 2011;Edwards & Harbinja, 2013a;Harbinja, 2017cHarbinja, , 2019aHarbinja, , 2019bWatkins., 2014) some scholars argue further for a shift of responsibility to platforms (Nekit, 2020a). Others have responded with a more practical focus, suggesting broad archival solutions for social media content (Carroll, 2013), inter-generational data sharing systems (Schafer et al, 2023), or workarounds for individuals (Carroll & Romano, 2011;Harbinja, 2017b;Pinch, 2014;Sherry, 2012;van der Nagel et al, 2017) including the adoption of electronic wills explicitly covering digital assets (Banta, 2019b).…”

“…Some argue that since digital data and content are attached to a specific user, creators should be able to decide what happens to this part of their legacy after their death (Zaleppa & Dudley, 2020), and legal experts thus further argue for including digital assets and content into digital property law (Nekit, 2020b). Although posthumous medical data donation is relatively intensely regulated, it entails legal considerations as unique as its aforementioned ethical considerations (Harbinja, 2019c).…”

“…Works have also investigated the legal implications of social media platforms' features and policies related to post‐mortem profile management and inheritance (Fuchs, 2021; Harbinja, 2017d; Nekit, 2020a; Viana et al, 2020). Social media platforms often lack sufficient account management features (Harbinja, 2017d, 2019a), e‐mail services do not generally facilitate post‐mortem control or transfer (Harbinja, 2019a), and privacy issues may result from digital afterlife products like those reviewed above (Harbinja et al, 2023). Finally, it has been explored how the expanded commercial use of individuals' digital information and assets requires corresponding legal protection (Banta, 2017).…”