Jeff Quinton pointed out an article in the Baltimore City Paper that asks the question, “What Happens to Your Online Self When You Die?” The article discusses the plight of Aaron Huth’s online identity after his death.

It seems that Mr. Huth had a far reaching contact list that spanned across the globe through varying communications networks and numerous web sites, such as Friendster. His family and friends had a difficult time notifying all of Aaron’s online acquaintances. This brings up the question how do your loved ones contact people they didn’t even know you knew through electronic means? The article is an interesting read.

It’s also an interesting question in these days of the Information Superhighway. It’s not something that anyone really neither thinks about nor would seem to be concerned about. The younger generations are the ones most heavily involved on the Internet when it comes to instant messaging and developing their own online identity. So as the younger generations of Internet users grow older I imagine this issue will come up more and more. It could become as big of an issue as Social Security and the children of the Baby Boomer generation.

The reason I’m even addressing this issue is because of the death of my best friend, Daniel Walker, back in 2001 (pre-9/11) probably left some of his online-only contacts in the dark as to what happened to him.

Daniel went off to college at UNC and I was still in high school. We talked on the phone occasionally and visited each other often (when he came home and when I made trips to Chapel Hill) but the majority of our communications came via AOL Instant Messenger. Granville Towers (the dorms Daniel lived in for two years) offered high-speed Internet access to its residence and Daniel took full advantage of this. I know I rarely picked up the phone to contact Daniel with a pressing issue; I just sat down and pulled out a keyboard. This method of communicating with Daniel continued even after I joined the Air Force, got married, moved to Virginia, and brought my daughter in to the world.

Times were different back then. Rarely did you ever have anyone on your buddy list that you didn’t know personally or through a friend. The online social networks of today didn’t exist and forums, blogs, etc. were things that were rarely used or frequented by the average person. For Daniel, notifying his online friends probably wasn’t too hard to manage after his death.

For days after Daniel passed away I saw his screen name online. dwalkertr would bounce on and off for whatever reason and it was nice to still have him sitting at the top of my buddy list even though it wasn’t Daniel on the other end. As a matter of fact Daniel still sits at the top of my buddy list today, almost three years after his death. I even have the same alert attached to his screen name so that whenever Daniel would come online or return from away status I would know so that I could talk to him. I was sad when Daniel’s computer was finally shut off and his AIM account was no longer logged into. It was yet another part of Daniel that was gone.

Realizing this has prompted me to take an internal look at my online presence and the identity I hold on the Internet. I’ve had the same AOL Instant Messenger account since 06 Nov 1998 and an ICQ account that dates back to earlier than that. My AIM buddy list contains 166 screen names for various people I’ve met on the Internet or know personally. I also have instant messenger accounts through MSN and Yahoo! These contacts alone topple most people address books and I won’t even delve into my T-Mobile Sidekick to determine how many e-mail addresses I have stored in it.

I have accounts on Orkut, Delphi Forums, Anandtech, Slashdot, WebmasterWorld, Red vs. Blue, and numerous other online communities. I’m a forum administrator at the soon to be launched SlapYoFaceOff. Each account has afforded communications with people that I’ve never met before but I would still want them to know if I had passed away.

I have three web sites of my own, which combined since their inception, have had millions of visits. Would these people still want to have access to the information contained on these web sites after I was gone? If so, who would pick up the slack and maintain these web sites?

The Baltimore City Paper article mentions some services that will track you to a degree and send out an e-mail if you don’t login to the service itself or respond to an e-mail it sends you after a specified numbers of days of inactivity. However, these sites seem to be somewhat shady at best.

The only way I can think of to handle your online identity after death and inform your Internet contacts of your death is to maintain a current will with detailed instructions, passwords, and a power of attorney so that your Internet affairs are handled the way you see fit.

This all probably sounds ridiculous now but ten years from now it could be an even larger topic of discussion if there isn’t a process already in place to take care of these matters.