Add this one to the battle of the wills: In addition to Johnny and Susie squabbling over their mother’s assets and who gets the antique rug, they may also have to decide what who gets her Facebook password.
According to survey conducted by Goldsmiths at the University of London, one in 10 people in the U.K. are now leaving their Facebook password behind, post-mortem. To cover all of their (digital) bases en route to the afterlife, passwords are being left behind in the grim reality of legalese.
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Facebook passwords aren’t the only ones being written down; Flickr and cloud storage accounts are also among some of the things being left behind. Facebook accounts no longer being used often run the risk of being overrun by spammers; and as more people store everything online, they increasingly want loved ones to have access to photos, videos and things that I’m sure you wish you’d never stumbled upon.
In addition, a study carried out by cloud computing company Rackspace found that more than 25% of people in the U.K. have music and films stored online that they wish to bequeath. Forget about scoring that vinyl Bob Dylan track. First, the earrings; next, my mother’s iTunes account.
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[via Telegraph]
Erica Ho is a reporter at TIME. Find her on Twitter at @ericamho and Google+. You can also continue the discussion on TIME’s Facebook page and on Twitter at @TIME.