The Social Media Takeaway - Louise McDonnell

Death & Social Media: Protecting Your Digital Footprint After Death

• Louise McDonnell • Season 1 • Episode 39

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If you died today, what would happen to your digital footprint including your social media accounts.  Our social media presence, personal data, and business profiles can continue to exist after our death, causing challenges for our loved ones. While we won't be here, do we really want to burden those we leave behind?

This is a conversation we need to have to ensure peace of mind for ourselves and those we care about.

In this week's episode of The Social Media Takeaway, I’m joined by Niki Weiss, a digital thanatologist, founder of ENDevo and creator of My Final Playbook. We discuss simple, practical steps to secure your Facebook and LinkedIn profiles, protect your digital assets, and reduce the burden on loved ones. We also highlight how creating a continuity plan can help prevent risks like hackers targeting inactive accounts.

We focus not only on death, but about empowering you to manage your digital legacy. It’s about ensuring your Facebook, LinkedIn, and other data are secure, your business can continue, and your loved ones can navigate everything smoothly when the time comes.

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Louise McDonnell:

Welcome to the Social Media Takeaway. I'm your host, Louise McDonnell, and this is the show for business people who want to learn how to use social media to drive more sales and leads for their business. If you like the show, make sure that you subscribe. And if you know of anyone who may be interested in the topic that we're going to be chatting about here today, please make sure that you share it with them. And another favor, you might give me a five stars on whatever platform you're listening to the podcast. Today, I'm really delighted to welcome Nikki Weiss. Nikki is a digital talentologist and founder of Endeavor and the creator of My Final Playbook App. You're absolutely going to love this episode. I find the topic extremely interesting. Nikki is also the host of the Death and Dying in a Digital Age podcast. So Nikki, you're very welcome to the show.

Niki Weiss:

I'm excited to be here, Louise. Thank you.

Louise McDonnell:

So this is a topic that we don't talk about often. Tell us a little bit more about your background and how you came to be, I'm going to say it again, a

Niki Weiss:

It's a thanontologist, right? I mean, for some people, you know, think of the word, the Greek word thano, thano means death. So a thanontologist is someone who studies death and dying. And so you can find me on LinkedIn and you'll see that on my LinkedIn profile. I call myself a digital thanatologist, right? So I am someone who focuses on the digital aspect of death and dying. And you would think like, how do those two go together? But here we are, we are deep into stepping into the, What I call the fourth industrial revolution. Right? So we are now into this technological age. Louise, the fact that you and I are talking and having this meaningful conversation, it's digitally recorded. So it now has a digital footprint. So think about all of our social media accounts, all of our logins, our bank accounts. You know, anytime that we are talking to somebody on the phone. All of that is being aggregated as what we call our digital assets and how we are being identified. I mean, we're going to say the cloud, but the cloud is really like that, internet of universe that now holds I don't even know the word right now of data points, right? That number just keeps, you know, gazillion trillion data points that are now just continuously. But those data points. Are identifying me as a person and who I am and how I exist in the world. So for those listeners who live in Europe, right? Or in a country where you have a lot of data privacy regulations, right? So in Europe, it's the GDPR in the United States every state has their own data regulations. And then countries worldwide have their own specific data regulations. But those data points are very specified when we're alive. But what happens to that data when we die? And that is where I've built out Endeavo.

Louise McDonnell:

Wow. okay. So for those people who are listening in and who have never even thought about the subject before. cause we're all on social media, we're all on our phones, we're all like, I'm just even as you're thinking, I'm sure I was thinking all the stuff that saves to the cloud or saves to. Wherever it is, like all that information. Like, so tell us some of the problems that you have encountered through people that have, not thought about this and have ended up with what kind of problems do people encounter when they, when they don't address this issue?

Niki Weiss:

You know, part of being a thanatologist is that, I hit the topic, a taboo topic, right? So death is a taboo topic. You know, sex, money, death. Those are probably the top three topics that people don't want to talk about. As a thanatologist, I go right into it. So let me ask you, Louise, part of living is dying. It's uncomfortable, right? So part of living is dying. We're all going to die. It's an inevitable event in our lives. We're going to die one of three ways, either sudden and unexpected, or we'll get a terminal diagnosis or condition that'll shorten our lives. Or like my father in law, who's 94 years old and is in a nursing home, kind of outlived his life, but he needs long term care. So each of those ways is going to determine how we leave this world. So let's say, Louise, I said to you, hey, life happens, and you think about multifactor authentication, how much of a mess would be left behind for your family. And I take a step back and say, acknowledging emotionally, the loss, the grief that people go through is. insurmassable, insurmassable, right? We just, it's unimaginable for people. But now, besides losing the loved one, now we have to deal with the legal, financial, physical, and digital aspects of the life that you built today. The mess.

Louise McDonnell:

Absolutely. I could just imagine, like, I'm even just thinking here now, like the stuff that I would look after, you know, in my household, nevermind my work, in my household that I just do, and that I would say my husband has no idea even what companies we're with. I get the emails. you know, I make sure that all those, those, some of those bills, those annual bills are paid. You know, even like when you think about it, like all your banking is done probably through online and all those codes and all those authentication codes. And, you know, I suppose the tip of the iceberg, it's just, yeah. And like, I can imagine As you said, the emotional, loss and loss, but then you have to,

Niki Weiss:

how do you think about a password when your person is gone, right? Or, or you get a diagnosis, right? So some people, they might not have a plan, but they get a diagnosis. Maybe they won't die tomorrow, but they get a diagnosis. Well, again, that just throws you into an emotional turmoil that. You're so focused on the diagnosis, right? Doctor's appointments, fighting for your life. What can I do next? The fact that you need to organize your digital footprint, your digital assets. If you were elite, if you were to die tomorrow, what about your Facebook account? Your LinkedIn profile. You have an online business that I'm guessing has your credit card attached to it with reoccurring charges. So for some people, you know, that organizing that aspect of their life when they don't have A digital file system and a physical file system. And I talk about creating a, a hybrid system called a physical, right? So it's important when you're building out this plan of, well, how do I, what do I want for my digital asset, my digital footprint? If I die tomorrow. Is to be able to have both the physical and digital so have it written down communicated to those you leave behind. So to have that sit down. Hey, honey conversation that kitchen table conversation. So people have some awareness of. what needs to be managed if you're not able to, and it's not just death, right? It might be incapacitation. It could be a temporary incapacitation, right? You're in a car accident, and you need surgery, and you might be in the hospital for a few weeks, but you are that primary person that takes care of the bills. So from that digital footprint aspect, how do you have a backup system? It can be overwhelming, but certainly we have a system in place to help you out with that.

Louise McDonnell:

And so I know you've asked me the question, but like, can maybe you can share some stories with our listeners here about, you know, different scenarios that actually have happened to people.

Niki Weiss:

So if I share a little bit of my background, my parents are behind me. So my parents they passed away before they were 50. And so for me, my personal experience and feeling comfortable in this place and space of talking about it is I feel my parents are guiding me and for anyone who has lost someone special to them. as deeply painful it is to lose them, it also feels like I have someone on the other side, whatever your beliefs are, that's guiding me through it. So my parents are definitely my why. But I also worked in hospice as a clinician bedside for the first part of my career. So having seen people go through that experience has been also very much part of who I am. 17 years ago, I moved from a hospice clinician into as a project manager, and I have been working in the digital tech realm for the last 17 years. And I would say that the biggest change that's happened in the conversation, at least in hospice around death and dying is because of our phones. This device here is changing the conversation about how we manage our lives postmortum. Why? Because of that multi factor authentication. So a story that I'm happy to share is the painfulness, and I'm sure some of your listeners might be familiar with this, is that someone dies either unexpectedly or anticipated, but you forgot about the phone piece. So, true fact, unless you have legal access to that person's phone, Even though you have their passwords, going into the phone is not so legal. So to be able to go down and shut accounts to get that multi factor authentication. imagine what it would be like if you didn't have their passwords. Or their phone was destroyed. So certainly I've experienced where people have to pay a large sums of money to go to court in order to go through probate in order to get access to their phone because there's such important information that they need in that phone. Oh goodness. So that's one. Another one which has become a very hot topic is that, you know, we gather a lot of information that we might not want our loved ones to know about, right? So with that, I'm always very cautious in working with my clients to say, Hey, if there's information that you're. downloading or having conversations that you don't want your loved ones about and you die tomorrow, they might find out. They probably will find out if they have access to your contact. a story that I share is a friend of ours that died unexpectedly and that it was the wife. So he dies unexpectedly. And the wife of 30 years gets onto his device and then finds that he was having an affair. So you lose your loved one and then after the funeral you start sifting through cleaning up and then find out a heartbreaking story. So it's important again to understand that this digital component of our very integrated lives today has a huge impact on after we're gone. And it could be a positive. Or not so right could be nefarious. The other piece that I try to share is that the funeral industries now are pivoting. They're ramping up and in their digital offerings so many funeral homes now are equipping themselves with high tech equipment. In order to capture to televise funerals, and then also from televising the funerals. Now that becomes a digital asset that people can hold on to for their lifetime to be able to put into their digital vault and be able to memorialize. Uncle Joe, your parents, a child that was lost.

Louise McDonnell:

Wow. I'm even just thinking as you're talking, like, I know I have an Android phone and everybody in my house knows how to get into it, but the kids have the bloody Apple iPhones, God forgive me. And you know, it's all that face recognition and it's like, Oh, can't get in that.

Niki Weiss:

So as a parent, this is what I would do as a parent. If the iPhone has a feature called legacy contacts, Right. So let all your listeners today, if you have an iPhone and you know, someone, so Louise, your children, you should get into their phones So, as a parent, you should be in there as a legacy contact. So you go into setting settings, privacy, privacy, legacy contacts. Only iPhone has this right now. Not the Androids, you're going to add yourself and your husband and whoever significant others. A legacy contact. What that legacy contact does is it gives you and anyone who is identified as a legacy contact legal permission to access their phone, their data in case of their mortality. So Louise, your kids would put you in as their legacy contact. You will then immediately once they put their your name and you will immediately get a. A text message, an SMS with a QR code. My recommendation always is to make a hard copy of that QR code. You're going to take that QR code and put it with your important, your crucial docs, right? Your important documents. We could talk about a crucial doc box, but some sort of storage location that you have where you like keep your birth certificate, your passports, right? All of your important documentation. You're going to create a folder and that folder you're going to say phone. If your child, God forbid, or you or someone who has an iPhone passes, you would take that QR code and the death certificate and go to the provider that will now give you legal access to the phone information.

Louise McDonnell:

Okay,

Niki Weiss:

Android doesn't offer that yet. Android is a little more involved. You have to go through Google and set up your Google legacy. Accounts in there.

Louise McDonnell:

Hmm. Well, so

Niki Weiss:

that's best practices if anybody has an iphone to go ahead and do that right away But my recommendation is make sure you tell the person. Hey, by the way, i'm putting you on as my legacy contacts So the other you know, you brought up another one too that I want to talk about which is ice so in case of emergency, one of the first steps in building out a final playbook is I ask the question, if you were incapacitated or died tomorrow and your phone died with you, how would your loved ones know, get ahold of you? So Louise, how would they know to get ahold of you? If you were in a car crash and your phone was damaged or, or died with you,

Louise McDonnell:

how would they know how to get in contact with me? I think they probably

Niki Weiss:

contact with your ice, with your in case of emergency contacts.

Louise McDonnell:

Oh, I suppose, I don't know, I suppose if people knew you, they'd know who your family were, they'd probably reach out to them, but if they didn't know you

Niki Weiss:

So the scenario is, you're in a car crash, the emergency medical system shows up, in the United States we call it EMS so the ambulance shows up, and they need to contact one of your loved ones right away. How would they know how to contact, who do, who do they contact, and how do they know how to contact them?

Louise McDonnell:

I would say what would happen is that they would look, if you're in your car, they would look at the registration number of the car. They would contact the local police and the police would go from there.

Niki Weiss:

So, the, to expedite this, right, most people tell me that their ICE, their in case of emergency is in their contacts. Right. When then I say, well, that's a problem, right? So now that's, this is when we create a physical, right? A hybrid approach. if you only have your emergency contacts in your phone, that's a problem for EMS. And the way that you recommended that they look for your registration, the registration that goes to the police, the police have to now like start investigating. People aren't showing, you know, who do they call? My recommendation is that it create a, a hard copy card and put down three people you trust and love that if they received a phone call, an unidentified phone call that they will either pick up the phone or listen to a message and that they are also those three people, your key people are going to be in contact with each other. And then I take that hard copy card like it's a business size card. Three names, maybe put your medical contact on there and a lawyer contact. And put it one in your wallet and one next to your car registration. then the police, the emergency, they'll be able to at least have a name and a number. And they don't have to investigate and that'll expedite the situation much faster.

Louise McDonnell:

Very good. That's, that's great advice. Yeah. I heard recently, Nicky, about somebody who they were reaching out for assistance on a Facebook group that I was in, that a loved one had died. Yeah. And their Facebook page had become hacked. And it seems that in the conversation that I was tracking, of course, in the comments that it was nearly that they were targeting accounts of people who had passed away. And then of course, as you said earlier on, if that person happens to have an ad account that's linked to their personal profile, then that's when those people then spend all your money on ads for. Terrible things. And, and it's very hard to stop it. it's a huge issue. What do you recommend in that scenario, Nikki?

Niki Weiss:

So this is part of that business continuity, right? So if you have an online business, I really want to empower you to find time before the end of the year, Right. Or if you're listening to this right within the next, make this a priority in the next quarter, right, is to build out your business continuity plan. And part of that business continuity plan is what happens you die tomorrow. And I know that's a hard, you know, to put that in your head, but you need to think about. For a short period of time, if I die tomorrow, what do I need to have in place? What standard operating procedure, SOP, do I need to have in place? So, I am not at risk for what you just described. So, what you described, Louise, is a nefarious activity that bad players are doing, and those are called zombie accounts. So you want to avoid a zombie account and the way to do that again, Facebook does have a setting. And I'm happy to share with your listeners. I do have a document that shares about how to safeguard and protect your digital assets. So in there I'll have, you know, being able to go into Facebook, all of your accounts, right? And some platforms have a today, some are better than others, but I know they're working on. How to safeguard your account. So to make sure that in Facebook, that you have your legacy contacts set up and that you have very specific parameters, right? You need to be looking at those privacy settings and make sure that if something happens, that your, your loved ones are able to switch off one document. One that I highly recommend, happy to share is called a digital Legacy Advanced Directive, Digital Legacy Advanced Directive. So to create a document with your digital accounts and how to log into them and the passwords and you need it, you need to keep this document up to date. And it's not just a digital copy, it's a hard copy, right? And my recommendation always is keep that document updated, like update those passwords every four months, right? Every quarter you're going to update it because the last thing your loved one is going to want to manage. is is in case you're hacked and that those those ghost accounts can become zombie accounts right so a ghost account is one that someone dies and they just never shut the account down so there might not be any activity on there so that's what we call a ghost account but when Bad actors are able to capture that account and then start to do nefarious activities with it, then that becomes a zombie account.

Louise McDonnell:

Mmm

Niki Weiss:

that's what they're most at risk at right now.

Louise McDonnell:

And actually, as you're talking there, just something that has occurred to me, because I come across so many people who cannot access their own social media accounts, if they haven't been in them a while. One thing that you can do really, really easily is to, is to reset the password. So even in that document, like, what's important is. where your account is linked to. So let's say it's a Facebook account and you want to reset the password. Again, the reset link is either going to go to a mobile phone, or it's going to go to an email address, or authentication app, even if you're leaving instructions for how to reset the password. So, okay, you can't get in there, but you changed the password. You forgot to update the document, but you know, then what to do. where the link is going to go to help you reset the password. At least you'll have an in, and I know like some people might be sitting here thinking, sure, it doesn't really matter. Cause I'll be dead if it happens to me, but it's not about you, actually.

Niki Weiss:

What you just said there is so common, I hear that all the time. Well, dead is dead. It's not though. Right. I mean, it, the hardest thing about dying. is watching someone you love die because you have to continue to keep on living. So if you love that person, you want to make sure you're not leaving a mess behind. And for those grief professionals or bereavement professionals out there, it is a very difficult time. And the last thing you want to be, you want to go through the grieving process without having to worry about the digital footprint or the password or the login. Yet, there is a financial impact because you have this right because credit cards are attached because your identity is taken you're not sleeping well at night because someone is behind the scenes doing some not so nice things to your loved ones. And so if you care about them, if you care about the life you're building today, then I want to empower those, I use the word empower. Debt is not dead. Not in today's digital world. It's just a part of the reality. If you're doing business online, then you have to think about what your life is when you're gone. Because it will continue keep giving to somebody. You just want to be in control about who gets.

Louise McDonnell:

Exactly. and that extends to, okay, we talk about the phone, but I suppose for this podcast, our focus really is on social media. So you've given some amazing advice there in relation to safeguarding your social media profiles. And I know Nikki, that you have a guide that sounds like a wonderful resource, like, so if somebody is interested in finding out more about what you do where's the best, the easiest place for them to find you?

Niki Weiss:

So there's two great places to start. One is that you can download the app. So it's called My Final Playbook. It's downloadable today on Apple Store and Google Play. oh, and you'll see a picture. See that? That's my mascot behind me, Jesse. So you'll see the little icon Jesse in the app stores. The other thing you can do is if you want to learn more about death and dying in the digital age, we have a podcast. We'll put that link into the podcast notes there. And this podcast, it's called death tech. It's like this new buzzword, believe it or not, that death tech is out there, right? How we die and the tools that are gonna help us to die, not just die better, but to build out our digital legacy. I have experts that I'll be interviewing with as well.

Louise McDonnell:

Fantastic. Fantastic. And your website then Nikki, you get it at,

Niki Weiss:

so website to get started. A great place to start is to take, we have a quiz, right? An assessment on determining how prepared you are. So that's probably a great place to start Louise. And they can go to finalplaybook. com forward slash. quiz. And if you go there, there is a quiz. It only takes two minutes. And then that quiz will kind of give you a score at the end that will email you your readiness score. How prepared are you if you were to pass tomorrow? And then we'll be able to start sharing with you different resources and tools to build out your final playbook.

Louise McDonnell:

Okay. And so tell me, does it matter then what side of the Atlantic you live on? Is it all the same for everyone in the whole world or is it very different from region to region?

Niki Weiss:

Well, I would say the initial tools, look, everyone should have a playbook, right? Everyone should have a crucial doc box in case of emergency cars. How you manage your digital assets. that is worldwide. That is a global best practices. So when it comes to the specific laws. In each country, even in the United States, each state has specific laws. That's where you might be starting to learn about what different laws in different countries use and how they express when someone dies, which is very interesting. But needless to say, we, disclaimer, we don't offer legal, medical, or digital advice. We're just an educational platform.

Louise McDonnell:

Okay, another thing that's just beginning to occur to me as you're speaking there. I'm just thinking of all these clouds that are just packed full of information. And one thing I suppose is to think that after you pass that all your information is in the cloud is one thing, but then they'll probably come a day If nobody claims that information, those pictures, those videos, those memories that they'll just disappear. So wouldn't it be better to be in control rather than to just let things happen and not be aware. So I want to thank you for raising awareness of this really it's a delicate topic, but you know, as you said, It's going to affect absolutely everybody, you know, so thanks so much, Nikki. It's been a pleasure having you on the show. So everybody just think about your phones. Think about your social media. Think about, you know, it'd be inevitable what's going to happen and how you can protect yourself and your loved ones after you pass. Thanks so much, Nikki. If you enjoyed the show, make sure that you seek us out on the social media and let us know what you think. How can people find you on social Nikki?

Niki Weiss:

LinkedIn is probably the best place to find me. So Nikki Weiss digital thanatologist. And then, you know, our social media accounts, they're constantly evolving, but we are happy to help you out. Easy to find. Thank you.

Louise McDonnell:

Thank you.