The Ghosts in the Machine: Who Owns Your Data After You Die?

When a loved one dies, the loss is felt in silence, memories, and absence. Yet today, there is also a strange presence that lingers: their digital life. Old emails, Facebook posts, Instagram pictures, WhatsApp chats, these fragments of existence remain long after the body is gone. In an age where so much of human interaction and identity exists online, the question is unavoidable: what happens to our data when we die?

A Life Lived Online

According to recent surveys, the average person has more than 100 online accounts. Our lives are documented in cloud backups, streaming platforms, bank apps, and social media feeds. Digital identity has become as real as physical identity, yet unlike a passport or birth certificate, it doesn’t simply expire upon death.

“Data is not mortal,” says Dr. Elaine Kasket, author of All the Ghosts in the Machine. “It lives on servers, scattered across jurisdictions, subject to corporate terms of service rather than human mortality.”

This means that in many cases, the digital self continues to exist in a half-life: searchable, clickable, and vulnerable.

How Platforms Handle Death

Most tech companies have now introduced policies for the accounts of deceased users. Facebook allows pages to be memorialized, frozen in time as a space for friends and family to share memories. Google offers an “Inactive Account Manager,” where users can decide in advance whether their data will be shared with a trusted contact or deleted after a set period of inactivity. Apple introduced “Legacy Contacts” in 2021, enabling family members to access photos and documents.

But these options only exist if the user prepared for them. In practice, many families are left scrambling, unable to access passwords, facing customer service representatives bound by privacy agreements. “It’s one of the most common frustrations we hear,” says a Karachi-based IT consultant who has helped families retrieve locked laptops and accounts. “Grief becomes entangled with bureaucracy.”

The Legal Grey Zone

Ownership of digital assets after death remains murky. Unlike physical property, data is often licensed, not owned. That means e-books, music libraries, and even email accounts may not be legally transferable to heirs. In the U.S., the Revised Uniform Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act (RUFADAA) allows executors limited access, but only if companies comply. In the European Union, data protection laws add another layer of complexity.

In Pakistan and much of South Asia, no clear legislation exists on digital inheritance, leaving families at the mercy of corporate policies. “We’ve seen cases where valuable business data or financial records were lost because no one had planned for digital succession,” says a lawyer specializing in intellectual property in Karachi. 

Comfort or Haunting?

For some, the persistence of digital traces is comforting. A daughter might scroll through her late father’s Twitter posts, hearing his humor again. Old photos might resurface as “memories,” giving relatives a bittersweet reminder of happier times.

But for others, it is unsettling. Automated reminders of birthdays, AI-generated slideshows, or chatbots trained on the deceased’s messages can feel intrusive, even grotesque. In 2020, Microsoft patented technology for creating AI chatbots modeled on the digital history of real people, a concept critics quickly labeled “digital necromancy.”

What happens if someone is digitally resurrected without their consent?. Who owns their voice, their likeness, their words?

The Commercial Question

Beyond grief and memory, there is also profit. Data brokers continue to collect and sell information from accounts of the deceased. Advertisers may target profiles that are technically inactive. Cybercriminals exploit abandoned accounts for identity theft.

“This is where the term ‘digital zombies’ comes in,” notes a Karachi-based cybersecurity expert. “Accounts that are dead but still exploitable, they walk the internet even after their owner is gone.”

Preparing for the Digital Afterlife

Experts recommend taking practical steps while alive:

• Create a digital will. Decide who should have access to your accounts, files, and devices.
• Use password managers. Some allow for emergency access in case of death.
• Set up legacy contacts. Take advantage of built-in tools from Google, Facebook, Apple and others.
• Be intentional about what remains. Decide whether you want data preserved, deleted, or handed over.

Beyond Death: A Cultural Shift

Across cultures, remembrance of the dead has always been important: graveyards, heirlooms, oral histories. But digital traces offer something new, a version of immortality that is searchable, replicable, and sometimes manipulable.

For some, this is liberating, an extension of legacy. For others, it is a troubling intrusion into the natural process of forgetting.

What is certain is that as more of life is lived online, the afterlife will increasingly be digital too. Our descendants will not only inherit our names and possessions, but our playlists, emails, and perhaps even our chatbots.

The question that remains is not whether our data will outlive us but who will control it, and to what end?

Fatima Hassan is a freelance journalist and the co-founder & Multimedia Editor of Echoes Media, dedicated to crafting impactful stories that resonate with diverse audiences. A journalism graduate of Northwestern University, Fatima combines analytical rigor with creative storytelling to explore complex issues and amplify unheard voices.