What Happens to Your Data When You Die?

Should we erase our profiles before we kick the bucket?

The Tech Titans

Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Amazon… organizations that unquestionably hoard the lion’s share of personal data on the web. They pore through your purchases, scrub your searches, extract your emails, aggregate your albums. We allow these actions. You read the Facebook Data Policy when you signed up for an account, right?

“We store data until it is no longer necessary to provide our services and Facebook Products, or until your account is deleted — whichever comes first. This is a case-by-case determination that depends on things like the nature of the data, why it is collected and processed, and relevant legal or operational retention needs.” — Facebook Data Policy (Jan. 2019)

What awesome ambiguity. Deleting your account should delete all data they have on you.

So let’s say you want to put the nail in the corporate cyberstalking coffin. Despite your bloodlust, Facebook could argue that they need to store your data ad…