''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''.
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.
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. 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.
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.
If you have access to Australian e-media, you can read more at Sydney Morning Herald - digital life
2 comments:
Very interesting post, John. Thanks!
Very much food for thought - think of our own collective writings on our shared blogs - once we are all gone no-one will have access to them unless we provide for such access.
Personally, I've got thousands of photographic images stored in albums on photobucket and all are locked into a 'private access only' account. I've backed most of them up on several hard drives but they are also password protected.
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