39◼ STRATEGIES Bloomberg Businessweek March 9, 2020EMAIL: THE
AFTERLIFE
Q&A● When you die in the U.S., what happens to your
personal email?
In most cases, nothing, unless your family
requests access or you’d set up an online tool.
● Like Google’s Inactive Account Manager?
Yes. That allows you to request the deletion
of your Google account after a period of inac-
tivity from three to 18 months. Start by going to
account.google.com, and selecting Manage Your
Data & Personalization.
The second option is to designate up to 10
beneficiaries to bequeath some or all of your
Google data to, including YouTube videos and
Calendar and Drive data.
● What if you don’t set up the account manager?
Next of kin may request access.
● Will they get it?
Sometimes. These questions are very open.
Last year in New York, a court ordered Apple to
give Nicholas Scandalios access to his deceased
husband’s photos. In the absence of an account
manager or an express direction in a will or trust,
the terms of service are followed. Those provi-
sions are quite vague, which usually means that a
court order will be required.
● What about executives who might have
sensitive work information in personal email?
Ideally, private emails shouldn’t store crucial
business information. If they do, then the execu-
tive should make provisions in her wills and trustsDeath provides a sweet release from the hell that
is replying to email, but it raises questions about
who gets to look at your inbox after you’re gone.
Laws governing digital content in the U.S. are all
over the place—emails, pics, direct messages,
and social media posts can be treated differently
after you die—so know what options you have
to protect yourself and your company, says
Edina Harbinja, a senior lecturer at Aston Law
School in Birmingham, England, and an expert in
postmortem privacy in emerging technologies.
Here are edited excerpts of her conversation
with Arianne Cohen:and authorize executors to handle the data.
● What happens to your work email if you die?
It depends on company policy. The law is
unclear, and so it’s safest to treat every email like
a document that would be handed over to the
company.
● How would I know what my company’s rules
are?
Procedures should be specified in contracts,
but in my experience, this is rare.
● The U.S. sounds progressive compared with
Europe on these matters.
Over 40 states follow the Revised Uniform
Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act, which cre-
ates a hierarchy for how inactive accounts will
be addressed. In Europe it’s different in every
country. France’s Digital Republic Act recognizes
“specific or general directives” for passing on dig-
ital assets, including emails. In Germany a court
ordered Facebook to grant parents access to their
deceased daughter’s Facebook account in 2018, so
it’s likely that emails would be treated in a simi-
lar manner—inherited like other property under
German law. <BW>ILLUSTRATIONS BY PATRIK MOLLWING