Death and Privacy (Interview with Prof. Lilian Edwards)

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From the course by The University of Edinburgh

Digital Footprint

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The University of Edinburgh

Digital Footprint

121 ratings

If I Googled you, what would I find? As we move around the online world we leave tracks and traces of our activity all the time: social media accounts, tagged images, professional presences, scraps of text, but also many artefacts we don't always realise we are leaving behind, or that others leave about us. In this course you will hear from a range of experts and you will have an opportunity to explore and reflect on your own online tracks and traces, to understand why your digital footprint is important. We will introduce you to some of the tools and approaches to effectively manage your online presence (or digital footprint). The course will focus on the different dimensions of a digital footprint, including developing an effective online presence, managing your privacy, creating opportunities for networking, balancing and managing professional and personal presences (eprofessionalism). By the end of this course (MOOC) you should be equipped to ensure that your digital footprint works for you, whether you want to be more private online, or are looking to create a more effective and impactful presence. You can also join the conversation on Twitter using the hashtag #DFMOOC and follow us @DFMOOC We hope you enjoy the course!

From the lesson

Why does your digital footprint matter?

This week, there is a range of experts who focus on why a digital footprint matters and how to create an effective online presence. The themes explored include data after death, privacy online and managing your online data. The activity and quizzes will help you to consider your own online presence and what you might do to make it more effective and work for you!

Our Data, Our Rights (Interview with Prof. Lilian Edwards)4:54

Death and Privacy (Interview with Prof. Lilian Edwards)6:29

Data after death (Interview with Prof. Lilian Edwards)5:39

Meet the Instructors

Louise Connelly
E-Learning Developer
University of Edinburgh
Nicola Osborne
Digital Education Manager
EDINA, University of Edinburgh

[MUSIC]

So one of the reasons that EDINA I began looking at what happens after

death was partly, a, because people kept asking me about it at parties.

[LAUGH] [LAUGH]

People are really,

really interested in this.

Yeah, the number one question I got asked for about two years was,

what happens to my Facebook profile when I die?

Right.

So I became intrigued.

The other reason, the other slightly more sensible reason,

is because death is one of these great points when everything is up for grabs.

In law, you tend to look at these transition points which are really death,

divorce, and bankruptcy, yeah?

So eventually we should get on to looking at divorce and bankruptcy.

But the one that people are drawn to is death.

So at that point, yeah, what happens?

Do you lose everything?

Do you have any rights to control what happens after your death?

Can you name your heirs?

Is that just your family?

What about your friends?

And these are all the interesting things.

because, again, one of the really interesting things about the social media

universe, until very recently, has been that people are much closer to

their friends and their family generally there, particularly the older generation.

Yeah.I mean,

what we're now seeing are the mum generation's on Facebook.

And possibly even the grandmum generation is on Facebook.

Often the grandmum these days, yes.

Yeah, I mean my mum, who's 88, is now on Facebook.

And at which point I began hurriedly adjusting my privacy settings.

[LAUGH] I actually read an article like this

that said the one thing that's going to do the best thing ever for

privacy settings is when your mum gets on Facebook.

And I think it has actually happened.

I think our research in digital footprints would suggest that students

are thinking that way also.

[LAUGH] Yeah, yeah, yeah and your teacher, and

your employer, and your future employers.

So indeed, people are more savvy about privacy settings now.

That just came out, interesting though, you might want to look

In the research they did for the new e-privacy directive, which just came out.

Okay. The new draft regulation and

they did a big Eurobarometer before it.

Yeah. Which actually showed, to my amazement,

because if you compared to when I started looking at this in about 2003.

No one new about privacy settings, really, except for the odd geek.

The odd comp sci student.

And now about half of people say that they fiddle with their privacy settings.

That's really good. It's not as high as you'd want it to

be but that's pretty good.

No, I should have brought it with me.

No, no, no, that's fine.

And a surprising number also are using kind of privacy enhancing tools.

And do you know what's driving that?

because it's fascinating me, I'll turn around and do the flip classroom.

It's ads, it's adblockers.

Okay.

So again, I can't remember the exact figure but

something like 50%, 60% were using adblockers.

And that's fascinating,

because no one ever used to have any idea about privacy enhancing tools.

The nerds only, I mean, are there kind of practical tactics you would encourage

people to take if they're thinking about their digital legacy in that kind of way.

Yes, yeah, no.

That's good and also back to the point.

[LAUGH] So

actually to go back a little bit to where you were about Facebook.

Facebook has been the gold brand in this field.

And the two sites that are now doing something really

positive about this are really Facebook and Google, big surprise.

So Facebook were the first really to get on the board with this.

And they introduced this concept of memorialization.

Which are these digital shrines, sort of, that you're talking about.

So Facebook, quite a while back now,

introduced a form which was hidden thoroughly under your privacy settings.

About nine layers down, in gray, behind a sign marked beware of the leopard.

They do not like making this obvious,

people don't like being reminded about their death.

But yes, there has been this ability for quite a long time for

after death, either the relatives or the friends to make choices.

To either,

essentially, get the profile deleted, which is often what the mom wants, because

it keeps upsetting her when it comes up saying like it's this person's birthday.

I've had those for people who've passed away.

Indeed [CROSSTALK] And it's quite upsetting.

That's right, you hear that story over and over again.

And particularly, I think the older generation who don't have the savvy to

find ways of avoiding seeing that sort of stuff.

It's really, really upsetting to them.

There was a case in Brazil which stays with me, where again, and I think we'll

see more and more of this, the friends had asked the site to be memorialized.

They wanted it to be a shrine.

This is what you see, you see people, they leave poems, they leave photos.

And the mum, every time it came up with something was weeping.

And she went to the courts and said I cannot bear this weeping wall anymore.

And the judge compelled it to be shut down.

Interesting.

Yeah, so I think we're going to see more conflicts in the digital space

between friends and family than we've traditionally seen in succession law,

in the conventional law of wills and testaments.

Yeah, that would make sense, yeah.

I think that's going to be a big deal.

Quite often the older generation doesn't even know, they're not on Facebook.

And it's a walled garden, so they don't have access to see that content

It just becomes about the friends and- Yeah, yeah.

And then suppose the friends get it memorialized,

maybe then they hear about it,

maybe then they get access because they joined Facebook or something like that.

And then they discover there are all these pictures of their daughter taking drugs or

vomiting or.

Being gay when they didn't expect it.

So all of these kind of issues are coming up in various anecdotes.

And even the odd few legal cases.

And that's again what drove some of the research me and EDINA did.

I suppose it started with looking at this through what you might call

a property lens.

Yep. What you asked, how can you control,

is it where your property after your death.

And we've became more and

more focused on what we've been calling post-mortem privacy.

Yeah. Which is something that

basically doesn't exist at all, privacy is for the living.

Yeah. Human rights are for the living.

The right to a respect for your private life is for the living.

This kind of makes sense but- >> Not in a digital world.

But in a digital world things change, yeah.

Yeah, I mean, at no point in history before have 2 billion people left

sensitive, recorded, archived, and searchable records of their private lives.

Yeah. It used to be just the odd poet.

[LAUGH]

[MUSIC]

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