IT'S E-LIFE after death. You pass on, but your digital self remains on email, Facebook, Twitter and numerous online accounts; a cache of words, photos, music, videos and money, which offshore companies then control.

Most Australians, their lawyers and lawmakers have done little to address what should happen to this vast online trove, which can be lost through passwords which heirs cannot penetrate, or through policies set out in the fine print of a user's account authorising a company to keep or delete it.

''Protecting the privacy of our users is a top priority,'' said Amanda Millar, a Yahoo! spokeswoman. The company made a commitment to treat everyone's account content as confidential, ''even after death''.
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Google imposes rigorous conditions and a deliberately lengthy two-part review, which involves sending a paper copy of a death certificate to its California headquarters, before it will allow access to Gmail and information stored in Google Drive and Google Documents.

''The underlying point is we would always privilege someone's privacy … It's really hard for us to make exceptions to open somebody's account to someone else,'' said a Google spokeswoman, Kate Mason.

Tama Leaver, a Curtin University internet studies lecturer researching what happens to our digital legacy, said consumers were bewildered and the policies of the big online companies varied wildly.

He urged people to consider the consequences of failing to leave details and directions about their online files. Otherwise bills could be unpaid, precious words and photos lost or embarrassing content revealed, while hackers might see a death notice as an invitation to piracy, he said.

''It's important for people to consider their online material as an asset and to think about how that's managed. If you have a partner or person you trust deeply, or whoever would be the executor of your will, you should make somewhere available so they can find your most important passwords,'' he said.

The American composer Leonard Bernstein failed to do that and, 22 years after his death, no one has been able to crack the password to the computer holding his memoir manuscript.

His story alarmed the Sydney writer Mariza O'Keeffe, who is now giving grave thought to the fate of her draft novel The Cut. Every dawn before she goes to work, her tale grows. When she closes her laptop, her nascent novel, now 40,000 words long, disappears behind a password only she knows.

For back-up, she sporadically uses a memory stick, but emails her fresh words to herself every day. O'Keeffe writes dialogue for avatars professionally and has been part of the digital world for almost 20 years. But it was only when she learnt about Bernstein and checked on the Yahoo! policy that she realised if she were to die suddenly, her words - including her novel and her blog - could perish too.

''There's a lot of writing on there I am quite proud of. I'd be quite devastated for it to be lost,'' she said.

Some technically savvy people have encryption codes and give different halves of the key to two trusted friends, who can match them to access critical passwords if there is a death or emergency, Dr Leaver said. But having hidden his own password list in a rainjacket pocket, he understands human fallibility.

''It's a hard balance to strike, because a lot of these companies have us changing our passwords every three months,'' he said.

The Melbourne firm Hutchinson Legal encourages people to list all their electronic information and accounts with login details, passwords and last wishes and give them to someone they trust. Suggestions include cutting each page vertically and giving the two halves in sealed envelopes to different people, such as adult children.

A managing partner with the firm, Grant Hutchinson, told of one widowed client whose husband had left no access clues to a computer program he developed, which was the core of his company's work. She was confronted by the business partner asking to go through his drawers.

''They never found the password,'' Mr Hutchinson said. But it would be a security risk to put passwords into wills, which are public documents, he said.

A Sydney wills specialist, Pam Suttor, who chairs the NSW Law Society's elder law and succession committee, agreed and said papers listing passwords could be locked in a strongroom for use by the executor.

She plans to raise the legal issues surrounding digital legacy with her committee later this month and the NSW Attorney-General, Greg Smith, after that.

Governments had barely ventured into this uncertain world, Dr Leaver said. ''To the best of my knowledge, no high level policy work is being done - and I have looked.''

Even digital companies' policies have come slowly. Start-ups often have none, while Facebook was forced to act because of the horror some messages and posts could cause the loved ones of deceased users, he found.

New social customs are evolving, as memorialised Facebook accounts can be useful for close kin to contact friends of the deceased whom they may not know, he said.

''I have seen someone getting a funeral notice from someone who has died,'' he said. But he echoed historians' lament that valuable information was being lost daily.

Gmail account holders who want information to be available when they are gone should post it on Google Drive or Google Documents and specify who had access, Ms Mason said.

But what happened with information stored on the cloud was still hazy, Dr Leaver said.

''The cloud is a complex area, because it is storage on the same machines which drive Google search. So they are public machines trying to drive what for many people is something very private; the storage of their valuable information.''

Ms Millar said Yahoo! users who wanted to ensure their account was dealt with after death according to their wishes, including allowing access to photos or message content by legal heirs, should make it part of their estate planning.

O'Keeffe plans to give her partner, Murrough, passwords and to print her draft book. Unlike Bernstein.

''What a silly man not to do a printout,'' Ms Suttor said.

By Debra Jopson

Link: www.smh.com.au/digital-life/digital-life-news/digital-never-dies--but-it-may-be-out-of-reach-when-we-do-20120615-20fes.html

This is an increasingly important area of interest. The person who develops a workable model will surely get rich if its patented. Its a problem Nigerian web geniuses could wrap their brains around for a solution.