The magazine of the Melbourne PC User Group I'm Alive, So That's Good Gordon Woolf |
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Gordon Woolf ponders on what happens if you die before your computer |
"Dúirt mé leat go raibh mé breoite."
That's what it says on Spike Milligan's gravestone in Sussex, England, and it
was a typically Spikish answer to a refusal by the local diocese to accept his
desired words in English: "I told you I was ill".
However it took several years, and, even though well down in the text on the
stone, it is a reminder that feeling a little off colour can have rather
dramatic consequences — and that things can take a long time to get sorted out,
often too long for e-mail service providers.
Even if you have to spend a short time in hospital, it may be too long for some
providers and anyone trying to get a message to you can see their message bounce
after as short a time as 10 days, and, more likely 90 days since you last
checked it (not 90 days since it last received a message).
Even paid accounts may expire quickly if you miss a renewal payment, and that
could be monthly, though it is more likely that your credit card will just keep
getting charged, or annually, in which case maybe you have to authorise a
payment.
For many people this will just mean that friends and family are out of touch,
but what if you have succumbed to the urgings of banks, finance companies, share
registries, insurance companies and others to receive accounts and reminders by
email?
You may well have someone authorised to take charge of your affairs if you are
not able to do so, but it is
unlikely that sorting out your e-mail backlog will be at the top of their list
of priorities.
If you have used a service like Gmail or the IMAP functions of any service
provider, by which you read e-mail but keep the original online, then it will
not only be the latest e-mail which could disappear. And if the space allocated
for your 'online e-mail fills, then new e-mails will be bouncing, while unwanted
ones sit filling the space.
This means that as a family member or other likely executor of someone who has
died, or reached a situation requiring someone to step in and take charge, then
e-mail accounts may have to move from the bottom of the list of urgent items to
somewhere much nearer the top.
To get access to an e-mail account with an ISP may require that they wait until
probate is granted — but that may not be until well after the period before an
inactive account is deleted. Some ISPs may at least put a hold on an account,
but few are set up to promise that and you can't be sure they'll do it.
According to the e-mail Essentials newsletter
http://www.office-watch.com/e-mail/, which set me off on these thoughts, some ISPs may accept a power
of attorney as an authority to access the account of someone who has died,
despite such an authority expiring, legally, with the death.
In practical terms, it makes much more sense to just leave a list of accounts
and passwords with someone you can trust, or in a place where someone you can
trust will find it immediately you are not able to do things for yourself. And suggest to a couple of
people what they may need to make sure this has happened if you are unable to do
things for yourself.
My choice has been to leave a printout of all my usernames and passwords in a
place where they will be found immediately... in an envelope marked "in case of
problems", and a friend has a note of the master password to the password safe
program on my USB drive. He is the person my wife is sure to ask what to do with
my computer.
In general I have insisted that important documents still come to me by snail
mail, but these steps will also help ensure that the many people around the
world that I have got to know by e-mail will not wonder, eventually, "what
happened to that bloke in Australia?" and won't wonder why they never got a
response to that query on PageMaker or Vegemite.
In closing, I will also quote Spike Milligan, on his 79th birthday: "I woke up
this morning and I was still alive, so I am pretty cheerful."
About the Author
Gordon Woolf is a longtime Melb PC member who wonders if e-mail and mortality
qualify as subjects of likely interest to most members. He is the author of
several books including How to Start and Produce a Magazine and (jointly)
Success in Store: How to start or buy a retail business, enjoy running it and
make money, which has just been reissued in a second edition which is being
printed concurrently in both Australia and the USA.
Reprinted from the April 2007 issue of PC Update, the magazine of Melbourne PC User Group, Australia
