January 27, 2010
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Postmortem email, and other advice
What happens to my e-mail accounts when I die?
T. C., Kansas City, Mo.Dear T. C.,
If you suspect that you’re going to die soon, I suggest that you print out important correspondence, or share your password with a loved one. If you have a Yahoo e-mail account, no one will be allowed access to it, so your contacts will have to be notified of your death some other way; the company will permanently delete your e-mails when it receives a death certificate. Gmail is a bit more generous. Your legal representative will be allowed access to your account when proof of death is provided. AOL also transfers the e-mail account to your designated representative upon receipt of a death certificate. The new user will have the option of sending out a death notice, or simply deleting the account. Individual companies have different policies, of course. When we die here at The Atlantic, our e-mails and other forms of electronic communication are collated, bound, and offered for sale to the general public. I highly recommend such works as The Collected Facebook Postings of Henry James (in nine volumes—he updated his page constantly); Harriet Beecher Stowe Tweets the Great Contest Which Still Absorbs the Attention and Engrosses the Energies of the Nation; and, of course, Thoreau’s BlackBerry.
