Have you picked a heir to your social media accounts?

The year is 2072, some 42 years after Kenya’s Vision 2030. Konza City is now a reality and there is nothing more left in the minds of Generation Z to create in the tech world. Exciting.

Sadly, if you share your birthday (April 2004) with Gmail and you have been living in Kenya, this is supposed to be the year you die — going by the 65-year current average life expectancy.

You have thousands of sent and received emails in your Gmail, Yahoo and work mails.

Your Twitter account is famous and your Facebook posts attract no less than one million comments.

And you have over half a million photos in Google Drive and thousands of music and videos on your YouTube channel.

“When a person dies they leave behind a digital presence which can include online accounts, passwords, contracts, receipts, financial transactions, medical information or personal websites and can involve banking, writing, images and social media,” reckons the Family Division of the High Court in a 2018 handbook on inheritance. This information is a summary of your digital life yet millions of people who have embraced online life have not given it a thought, according to Google.

“We recognise that many people pass away without leaving clear instructions about how to manage their online accounts,” observes Google, now with over one billion users globally.

Yet for Kenya, the Family Division of the High Court observes that there is no law addressing the inheritance of such digital assets or property, opening room to losses and disputes.

“Lack of direct access to this type of digital asset could lead to a loss in a person’s estate since this type of asset will not be included in any estate planning as actual property,” observed the High Court last year. Today, the number of active Kenyan Internet subscribers is 42.2 million, according to data from the Communications Authority of Kenya.

In July last year, a court in Germany offered a landmark ruling where parents of a 15-year old girl who was killed by a train in 2012 sued Facebook for denying them access to her online profile.

The parents wanted to establish whether their daughter’s Facebook life would offer a glimpse into whether her death was suicide. While Facebook argued that the platform contained personal exchanges which ought to be protected, the court ruled that the data should be treated the same way as personal letters and diaries and passed on to heirs of the deceased.

Just as books and letters are passed onto heirs, so should the data, presiding Judge Ulrich Herrmann ruled, arguing that Facebook data was part of the parents' inheritance.

This demonstrates that the question of what happens with one’s digital legacy is becoming more important globally. Yet for Kenya, there exists a legal gap.

“The prevalence of an individual’s online presence can increase the number of assets available for transfer to heirs, thereby affecting access to valuable property,” notes the High Court.

Unlike now when old family letters, photos or books are tucked somewhere, possibly in a box, and family members spent hours looking through, digital life has changed all this.

Such content is now locked away behind passwords. Facebook now offers users a choice. One can choose to have their account memorialised once they pass on. This locks down the account but allows people to still see it and pay tribute.

In addition, a user can nominate a relative or friend who can manage the account.

However, Facebook won’t allow the person to log in to the deceased’s profile or access their private messages.

“When a person passes away their account can become a memorial of their life, friendships and experiences... we’re introducing a new feature that lets people choose a legacy contact,” Facebook announced in 2015.

“Alternatively, people can let us know if they’d prefer to have their Facebook account permanently deleted after death.”

The restricted use or preferring to have the account deleted eliminates the Pope John Paul II dilemma. He had entrusted his diaries to his personal secretary and entreated him to burn them upon death but instead the secretary offered them for publication.

Google also has the ‘Inactive Account Manager’ tool which allows one to choose what happens with their digital information after their account has been inactive for a length of time.

One month before that deadline, Google sends an alert by either email or text message but obviously, if one is dead, there will be no response.

After another month of silence, Google contacts ‘trusted contacts’ that the deceased person chose.

“If you choose to share data with your trusted contact the email will additionally contain a list of the data you have chosen to share with them, and a link they can follow to download the data,” says Google.

This will hand them control of the deceased’s Google products such as Gmail, YouTube and Google Drive, effectively ensuring that one’s social life does not die. But for Yahoo, the account is not transferable, according to its terms of service.

While such vital information exists, most online platforms users continue to live with no end of life in mind, leaving their digital treasures at the risk of getting lost.