Prepare For Your Death By Creating A Digital Tombstone

They say that nothing in life is certain, except for death and taxes. When your physical life ends, what happens to your online life? Like it or not, immortality belongs to your digital self. Every person leaves an online footprint, but the real question is, what should happen to that online footprint after your physical self no longer exists? Did you know that you can memorialize your Facebook profile? Your Twitter profile however is a different story. Just think about it. What would you like your last tweet to say?

You can even make use of websites like 1000memories to create a memorial. Will you want to let people know that you have passed on? Will you want to have your blog, website or social media account inform others of your demise? What about the important stuff like the password to your Gmail account, your social media accounts, your online document vault (think DropBox) where you store important documents or digital copies of policies and perhaps your will? How will you let your loved ones know about all this information?

SecureSafe is a great way to store information such as passwords and documents. It is accessible from your iOS device too. Their best feature by far is Data Inheritance. In the event of an emergency, you can let someone you nominate inherit all your information (or specific data items only). Their pricing structure is also incredibly affordable. The free version would suffice for most users, but if you really want more functionality, for $1.50 per month you get unlimited password storage and 100 MB file storage quota.

For some of us, our online persona is as important as our offline one. We spend many hours building our online reputation and presence. It would be a horrible shame to let it gather dust and go to waste if you should pass away. There are so many online tools out there that allow you to control exactly what happens to your digital self in case of such an event.

It reminds me of a young 17-year-old girl named Harshini Poonja (@netizentwo) who was on her way to a family wedding. She was one of the 158 people killed in the Air India Express flight IX-812 that crashed at Mangalore airport in 2010. Her last tweet read “At the airport and blah =_= Only thing to look forward to is the rain.” It brings home the uncertainty of life. The real question is, what are you going to do about it?

Image Credits: [Now That’s Nifty] [Edinburgh Views]