Privacy Rights of Deceased Email Account User
posted by:Anne Ko // 10:06 PM // March 02, 2005 // Digital Democracy: law, policy and politics
What happens with your email account when you die?
Does your family have access?
Or rather, would you want your family to have access?
These are the looming questions in the continuing Yahoo saga involving the grieving parents of a US soldier killed in Iraq, and the contents of his Yahoo email account.
Under Yahoo policy, email accounts are erased if there has been no activity for 120 days. For months, Yahoo has refused to release the email content at the request of the soldier’s parents amidst concerns of breaching the privacy rights of its users. However, the soldier’s account has yet to be erased (since his death last November) and Yahoo is currently in negotiation with the parents to come to a “shared goal of finding a mutually agreeable resolution to a complicated and, in many ways, uncharted issue."
To read the article in USTODAY.com, click here.
Comments
Personally,
I wouldn't want my family to gain access to my e-mail, if God forbid, I were to pass on. It's not that I have something to hide, but that I'd want my conversations kept to myself. I'm sure the people who wrote me things would feel the same way.
Of course I'm just one person. Maybe Yahoo and other providers should have an opt-in option that say in cases of death you would allow family to have access to e-mail or at least the contact list. Having access to contacts might be a worthwhile thing, so those who one keeps in touch with can be notified of death.
Posted by: Roby at March 3, 2005 01:57 PM
My husband recently passed away and we cannot find his Will which is causing a lot of added stress.
I feel we should be able to get access as he may very well have information which could help we the family track his Will down.
Posted by: Pebbles at November 7, 2006 08:30 PM
