[I'd speculate that the property of the deceased becomes the property of the estate, but that's just a guess. Below message forwarded with permission. --Declan] *********** From: "Kelly J. Cooper" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Message-Id: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: Thu, 15 Feb 2001 17:53:26 +0000 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: weird question MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-UIDL: 07a0624fc444af2fc61df778f9479764 Declan, A sort of odd, slightly morbid Politech-related question - do you know of any legal precedents for handling the electronic accounts of the dead? To be more specific, when someone dies, are there any laws or accepted practices for handling their email account, their remote files, their web pages, etc? Are their files turned over to relatives or deleted? Do people put auto-responders on the accounts with a death announcement? Or a statement on the person's web page? One assumes that in a for-pay situation, the accounts (mail, web, files) go away once the bills remain unpaid long enough. But what of accounts on a friend or acquaintance's system? This is somewhat related to privacy since one has a limited expectation of privacy on the things that one mails to another person, but what are your own post-mortem privacy rights (if you didn't specify details in your will, that is)? If the deceased committed suicide, does the family have a right to review his/her files/email seeking hints as to why s/he did it? It would appear that the police may look through the computer of a murder victim, seeking records of contact or threats or similar. But what are their limitations? Thanks, Kelly J. -- Kelly J. Cooper - Security Engineer GENUITY - Main # - 800-632-7638 3 Van de Graaff Drive - Fax - 781-262-2744 Burlington, MA 01803 - http://www.genuity.net ------------------------------------------------------------------------- POLITECH -- Declan McCullagh's politics and technology mailing list You may redistribute this message freely if it remains intact. To subscribe, visit http://www.politechbot.com/info/subscribe.html This message is archived at http://www.politechbot.com/ -------------------------------------------------------------------------