Neil Armstrong may have been imprinting the moon with a famous step, but you are creating everyday a series of footsteps that may live forever — or at least long enough to bother you. You know, your cyber footprint.
The websites that you browse, the emails you sent, receive and forward, the status updates on social networks, the movies you mention having appreciated, even the points your are collecting on online games, .. the list would be long enough.
When speaking of legacy, this footprint often becomes a problem to manage for those who remain. What will become of it? Who can benefit from the online revenue generating you have been generating? Who will pursue the work you had started? What will become of those embarrassing mails you had sent previously?
Previously, people had wills written for their earthly possessions. Your books, photos, all the small souvenirs that you shared with loved ones could be shared with the ones you wanted. But what about your cyber footprint? All of your assets, or most of them, are locked with a password, and services providers don’t usually pass your digital belongings to any other than you.
“The traditional things we have done for estate planning—proof of death, changing titles, all those sorts of things—may need to change in this new context of digital assets,” says Dennis Kennedy, a St. Louis, Missouri, technology attorney who is also a recognized expert on how technology intersects with the law. “One of the last questions you tend to ask is, ‘What happens when somebody dies?’ Nobody is planning to die. Very few people want to think about that and what is going to happen to their stuff, but it has to be done, and it has gotten more complicated with the addition of digital assets.”
That’s why it’s always interesting to have a guide to help you through your issues.