it's your legacy... Entrustet HIWI Blog

Twitter joined the ranks of Google, Facebook and Myspace by creating a company policy for what to do with Twitter accounts of deceased people.  The move was spurred by Twitter’s recent improvement of recommending people to follow.  Adele McAlear of Death and Digital Legacy, tweeted to Twitter’s customer support team that she was worried about running into deceased people in the recommendations and the next day, Twitter released their policy.  It could be coincidental, but she deserves credit for asking.

Here’s Twitter’s new policy:

If we are notified that a Twitter user has passed away, we can remove their account or assist family members in saving a backup of their public Tweets.

Please contact us with the following information:

1. Your full name, contact information (including email address), and your relationship to the deceased user.
2. The username of the Twitter account, or a link to the profile page of the Twitter account.
3. A link to a public obituary or news article.

You can contact us at privacy@twitter.com, or by mail or fax:

Twitter Inc.,
c/o: Trust & Safety
795 Folsom Street, Suite 600
San Francisco, CA 94107
Fax: 415-222-9958

We will respond by email with any additional information we might need.

Please note that we cannot allow access to the account or disclose other non-public information regarding the account.

Twitter’s policy is long overdue and a big step in the right direction, but has Twitter gone far enough? The policy is very similar to Facebook and Google’s: Twitter will not grant anyone access to any private messages and will not allow you to transfer the account to an heir.

The policy is too one-size-fits all. What if I run a consulting business and want to transfer my twitter handle to a business partner?  What if I want my family to be able to tweet on my behalf?  What if I want my account to live on, but my family wants it deleted?  Or vice versa?  What if my Twitter account is for some reason worth money, either for the historical significance of my tweets or for the following list on the account? There are hundreds of scenarios that this policy does not cover.

Twitter’s process for verifying information is hazy. This policy’s process of communicating with family and friends of the deceased to verify death information is lackluster. Anyone could contact Twitter claiming to be someone related to the dead person, supply a couple of links, and probably pass Twitter’s smell test. Thus, Twitter runs the risk of fraud and locked accounts by allowing multiple people to report deaths. In our opinion, Twitter could use a more holistic solution, such as the Entrustet Corporate Partner Program, where deaths are verified by an independent third party (Entrustet) and the necessary account information is being given to the appropriate people.

Ghost Tweeting? Twitter also runs the risk of creating “ghost tweeters” similar to the Facebook “ghost profiles” by recommending that users follow other users who are actually dead.

Want to make sure your Twitter account is handled as you’d like it to be? Twitter’s policy is a step in the right direction.  Twitter is one of the leaders in the space because they actually acknowledge that there is a problem that their users want addressed.  The policy shows that Twitter is on the cutting edge, but does not go far enough.  In the meantime, you can decide exactly what you want done with your Twitter account when you die by inputting your wishes into a free Entrustet account.  You can nominate a digital executor who will be in charge of letting Twitter know that you’ve passed away and you can nominate an heir if you’d like your Twitter passed on to an heir or deleted when you die.

Tags:

Company death policies · Twitter death policy · Twitters new death policy · Website death policies