The Digital Legacy Clinic at CU Boulder is a pro-bono service offered to the public to help with issues around digital legacy and online data accounts. They can help family members recover photos, emails and social media accounts belonging to a deceased loved one, and they can help people make an end-of-life plan for their own digital accounts.
Jed Brubaker, the founder of the clinic and a CU Boulder professor, said the average Internet user has about 190 online accounts and produces 850 gigabytes of data each year.
"That's a whole lot of photos, letters and personal history, and it would be a shame if that were lost," Brubaker said. "And the truth is, the technology platforms just haven't kept up with our end-of-life needs, so at the clinic, we're here to bridge that gap."
Brubaker's work has focused on the digital afterlife for 15 years. His work has directly informed the design and development of Facebook's Legacy Contact, a feature that allows a user to select someone to manage their memorialized profile after their death. Without a feature like that, social media accounts that are inaccessible to anyone but their owner can exist long after that person has died, sending out routine birthday notifications, friend anniversary notices and memories.
However, most technology platforms don't allow users to name a beneficiary like they would in a financial account.
"I think the tech sector is in need of some help to figure out what the best practices are so that every platform has some kind of support for end-of-life planning because most of them don't right now," Brubaker said.
The clinic, which has a research and education focus, is partly funded by a $550,000 National Science Foundation grant. A team of specially-trained students respond to inquiries from clients and help them navigate digital accounts.
Master's student Rory O'Flynn helped develop the website for the clinic and has helped support a client. The client she worked with had a brother who died but still had portfolios online. She helped the client archive the brother's photos, shut down part of the accounts and memorialize the rest privately for his family.
"It was actually really cool," O'Flynn said, adding, "It's really, really interesting because it's not something many people think of until it happens to them."
Digitized photos, videos, art, music, stories, blogs or professional work can all be lost after death. Losing it can be a loss of memories, and it can be devastating for loved ones.
"It's not just data," Brubaker said. "There are personal stories, there are personal histories, there are family heritage. It's hard to overstate the symbolic value of this."
The logistical burden of not being able to access those accounts can worsen stress and suffering when loved ones are already grieving.
"It's about reducing suffering and reducing extra areas of stress when someone is grieving, whether it's grieving their eventual death or grieving the loss of a loved one," doctoral student and researcher Dylan Thomas Doyle said. "When someone dies, there's so many tasks and there's so many emotions that come up."
Brubaker said many people don't know how to talk about death. He hopes the clinic will help by providing clarity.
"We can take them through the process and take them step by step and reduce the ambiguities and uncertainties and show them how to do this," Brubaker said.
The clinic is open to anyone of all ages. For more information or to request support, visit colorado.edu/center/digital-legacy.
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