Who owns the Data of the Dead?

[Evo Var]

So I listened to a podcast by Cory Doctorow where he talked about how as time goes on more and more of ourselves is stored on our devices and in the cloud that consists of the internet so I am interested to know if anyone has given any thought to what they would want to be done with their data after they die and who they would trust to go through and only publish or display what they want to be kept. Then purge the rest of the data.

My other question is should we purge anything after death? Why don't we just let those close to use see who we are with nothing hidden after death. It would not effect use after we have died. At least not unless someone finds a way to bring back the dead.


So here is a link to the article that these questions came from.
Internet of the Dead By Cory Doctorow

 

[Mitsu]

I don't believe in an afterlife, so what happens to my data actually does not matter. I won't exist anymore, so there's no harm it can do to me-- my feelings won't matter. However, as I sit here now, there are plenty of things I'd rather other people not know of me-- I'm a private person. This prompts me to want most of my data to be destroyed completely. Although, I don't leave much of myself on the computer, and even less on the Internet. I also don't believe that the impersonal things I've done have such a merit to them as to require them being saved-- graphics, writings, ect.

I think the automatic purge after death should be something left in the will of the deceased. If the decision is not made, then it should be handled just like any other similar issue, when something is not declared in a will. Sometimes people hide things for a reason, and it would be a shame to sully the memory one has of a loved one, due to a few hundred KB of text, or a few MB of pictures. So, I guess it comes down to whether or not it's morally correct for these potently harmful secrets to be revealed or not. Is it okay to put someone in a position of having a false perception of a deceased loved one, when damning evidence can so easily be found? Is it okay to shatter that perception without their consent?