Tech and life

What we do in our spare time has changed dramatically over recent years. With the recent upsurge in social networking, we’re all spending more time on Facebook and Twitter. For many of us, social networking along with gaming means that, as well as staring at a screen at work, we are now staring at another screen in the evening and into the late hours as well. And this obsession generally spills over into the weekend when we can chill out and catch up with blogs, social networks or put in some extended gaming sessions. For some, social networking and gaming can become an unfortunate addiction, eating up precious spare time we’ll never get back.

What’s my point here? Well although we can generate great memories from online encounters, I suspect we may be better off getting out and ‘getting a life’ as they say. But I hear you make the point what’s the difference with slumping in front of the telly all evening. Not much. We’ve just switched to a different screen, albeit a more interactive experience, but I would question whether it’s the best way to generate great memories.

So what’s the big deal about memories? Well, the older we get, the more we look back, believe me. Our lives are full of milestone events that go to make fond memories – first day at school, first date and all the other firsts. Memories of our parents and friends, school days, school mates, college days, college mates, work and work mates, sporting events and sporting achievements, musical events, hobbies and pastimes. Holidays and days out with the family. Girlfriends, boyfriends, marriage, the birth of our children and the children growing up. I could go on. We’ll look back on all these events as fond memories as we get older. And it’s not just sights and sounds that make memories. Smell and taste are also important. I remember the distinctive smell of some of the shops of my childhood – particularly ironmongers, delicatessens and cafes.

My contention here is that spending time online generally isn’t making fond lasting memories. Sure, we’ll probably remember some YouTube videos and memorable games just as we fondly remember some TV programmes, but I suspect most of our gazing at screens will just be a distant blur in 20 or 30 years time. And of course if we have a young family growing up, spending too much time gaming or on Facebook to the detriment of engaging with our kids surely is getting our priorities badly wrong. Believe me they grow up all too fast and are gone before you know it leaving you wondering if you spent enough time with them in those vital years. You only get one chance at life as they say.

So get away from that screen and go out and make memories with your friends and families. Capture them digitally too and don’t forget to back them up to your external hard drive and to the cloud so at least you’ll have these to jog your fading memory in days to come.

Image credit: Buttercup Sunset by Autumnsonata

So you’ve uploaded all your photos to a social network and they’ve been tagged. Your profile picture is on Facebook, Twitter and now Google+ and your picture avatar follows you everywhere online from forums to blog comments. That’s okay isn’t it? There’s nothing to worry about, everyone else is doing it so it must be fine… I’d rather this than a cartoon or clip art for my avatar.

And it may well be okay, but there have been recent developments which may just start the alarm bells ringing. But first, can I take you back to a time before Facebook and social networking. In the early days online it was fine to have a cool username and cartoon avatar as part of your online persona. I came across this post on identity management in cyberspace (written in 2002 – pre-social networking) which brought that home nicely. It wasn’t necessary to bring your real personal identity online in those days. In fact there are even a bunch of terms used to describe your online persona: handle, alias, nickname, moniker, alter ego. But with the rise and rise of Facebook, Twitter  and now Google+, they want real names, with profile pictures encouraging real identity aggregated between online services. It seems now it’s time to be real online – real names and real tagged photos to identify us. But as I’ve said before on several occasions, we’re still breaking new ground with online social networking. We’re only about 5 years into this fledgling phenomenon. It’s not been done before and it remains to be seen whether being so open with our real names and photos will have a scary downside in say 10 to 15 years time when so much information has been released by us and gathered by… who knows who? So I’ve always been a little reluctant to put too much personal information out there. But not so for my business – online directories with real names and business details is surely okay. But hear me out, particularly on online photos of yourself.

Facial recognition

It’s not very hard to imagine that in the next few years our mobile devices will feature facial recognition technology – software to put names to faces in photos. Trial facial recognition software, PittPatt,  developed at Carnegie Mellon University can take a photo of a stranger and, using information from the cloud (Facebook, etc), can track down their real identity in minutes. It’s only a short hop from there to search and dig out other information like address, email and mobile phone numbers linked to the photo and identity and we surely have the scary possibility of some stranger snapping you with their mobile phone and fairly quickly getting hold of a lot of useful personal information about you.

Pseudonymity

But then I could be totally wrong, and judging by the millions  of people quite happy to put so much information online, I probably am. But at least spare a thought for those of us who continue to operate under pseudonyms and don’t want to put up photos of ourselves. It’s not because we want to hide behind a front and dish out stuff without fear of recrimination. There may just be a good reason now for trying to preserve our anonymity.

Have you every googled your name and been surprised at how much detail comes up? Even though some of it is out of date and quite misleading, it’s all virtually impossible to remove once it’s out there. But people are making judgements of you based on what they find. You could also try googling your phone number + city/town and see if that brings up other aspects of your identity for all to see.

You don’t have to go the real name route online. After a lot of pressure, Google has finally backtracked on the real name requirement for Google+ and soon you will be able to sign up under a pseudonym. So perhaps it’s time to think again about online photos and online identity before it’s too late. Or am I just being way too paranoid? Drop a comment below.

A couple of years ago I wrote a post on online identity and privacy giving some reasons for using an alias on this blog. I registered the domain under a proxy to preserve my anonymity and have since continued to be techandlife here. As far as I’m aware, no-one reading this blog (except for close family, and Google of course) knows my real identity. So in terms of blogging, it seems you can still preserve your anonymity online, if that’s what you want.

But things have moved on quite a lot in 2 years. With the explosion of ‘social’, seen particularly in the growth of Twitter and Facebook and now it seems Google+, it’s now pretty clear that you can’t be social and hide behind an alias. To be social you have to give a real photo of yourself and a real name, and judging by the popularity of Facebook for example, most people don’t seem to have a problem with that. In fact, it’s very clear that I’m really very much in the minority holding back on revealing my identity.

I would still argue that ‘online social’ is still in its infancy. We just don’t really know what the long term effects of our online presence will be. But there’s no question it’s hard to fight against it. Apart from Twitter and Facebook, here are a further three areas where anonymity is being shoved aside.

Quora

Quora is a pretty recent and very popular questions and answers site. I tried signing up under an alias but they would have none of it. I was blocked because the name associated with my account did not conform to Quora’s naming policy. Real names please.

Facebook photo tagging

Yes I know, if you’re registered with Facebook (under your real name), you can remove your name tag from photos where you’ve been tagged, if you want. But did you know that your photos can still be tagged even if you aren’t on Facebook. I know because it’s happened to me. Yes, I know the tag won’t link back to your page, because you don’t have one, but still anyone on Facebook can insert your name in any photo there. So how many people have been tagged in Facebook without even realising it – because they’re not on Facebook. And you can only remove the tags by signing up, then removing them.

Google+

To register for Google+, the latest social network, you have to have a Google profile, and that can’t be private any more. You have to reveal at least your name and gender.

So all roads seem to be  pointing to zero anonymity now if you want to go fully ‘social’. And that seems to be right – social and anonymous just don’t fit together. People want to talk to real people. So that’s it. I’m going to embrace ‘social’ and start putting up my real name when required. What changed my mind? Well, just the seeming futility of continually pushing against it when everyone else seems happy with it… and also the arrival of Google+. I think I have to be there. Looks like it’s going to be a serious rival for Facebook and that’s got to be a good thing. We just have to blindly trust Google with our personal information and that’s okay… isn’t it?

But I’ll go cautiously. I think I know enough about online to be careful what I say and what I reveal.

Any thoughts on anonymity and social?

A recent family bereavement got me thinking. What would happen to this blog and all my online accounts if I died tomorrow? I hadn’t really given it much thought before and I’m sure many of you are in the same boat. It’s hard enough to cope with a family bereavement let alone sit down and try and sort out someone’s online accounts so we really should give our loved ones as much help as we can to cover this unfortunate possibility. As it stands, I’m sure my wife would be completely at a loss to know where to start with my online life. Not surprising really as she doesn’t know which online accounts I have! So let’s have a look and see if there’s anything we can do to help deal with our virtual life in the event of our actual death.

What about your blog?

If you have a blog, have you thought what would happen to it if you died tomorrow? It’s actually an asset you own and I guess the first question is would any of your family want to take it on? Better find out now and if there is someone, you’ll need to be able to get your blog admin details to them somehow after your death. Don’t forget to include domain renewal dates and blog host renewal dates. More about that later. If you’ve monetized your blog through advertising for example, the income from that may be a nice little bonus for your loved ones and that may be another reason for keeping the blog alive. So remember to pass on your PayPal details. They’ll need that to be able to remit the advertising revenue back to the family. On the other hand, if no-one is really interested in carrying on your blog, they may consider selling it to another blogger. After all, a ready-made blog may well suit someone who wants to move into blogging and bypass all the hassle of setting it up and building up traffic. What will happen to your blog when you die is summed up very nicely in this post on Daily Blogging Tips.

What about Facebook?

Your loved ones will have the choice of terminating your account or keeping it in a ‘memorial state’ which removes features like status updates and contact details and lets only confirmed friends view the profile and post comments on it. Discuss this with them. Again, they’ll obviously need your admin details whichever they choose. You may also want to arrange a farewell message to be posted in the event of your death. You could keep that with your log in details as discussed next, but make sure your digital heir knows where to find the details.

Passing on the important details after death

Bear in mind that the terms of service of most online accounts don’t permit passing them on to a ‘new owner’. Each site tends to have its own rules about who can do what should someone pass on, and executors may need to make special requests to close down accounts or access your information. For info on the policies of Yahoo, MySpace, Google and Microsoft when it comes to dealing with the accounts of deceased users, read this Educo blog post or this MakeUseOf post.

If you can pass the accounts on, first you’ll have to identify someone who would be willing to tidy up all the loose ends, probably your spouse or partner. But don’t forget to cover the possibility that you and your partner may die at the same time. If you’ve already made a Will, this may all sound familiar. Of course keeping your online admin details with your Will may be a good solution. But I can hear you say, I change my passwords regularly and add new online accounts all the time, I can’t keep changing these details in my Will. Well, if you use a username/password manager like LastPass, you only have to add your email address and one master password to your Will documents. All you account usernames and passwords are held securely in LastPass. Once your digital heir accesses your LastPass Vault, they can see all your usernames and your passwords. Another possibility I read about recently on MakeUseOf is LogAway which allows you to create a single click log in for hundreds of websites. You will have to change the master password occasionally but this is all that will have to be updated with your Will documents. Of course, you don’t have to keep your details with your Will. Any secure place will do where your spouse, partner or executor can get hold of the details when required. You could also use a service like Death Switch to email your loved one with all the details after you’ve passed away.

There are also online services like Legacy Locker and Entrustet that allow the creation of a will for digital assets. Legacy Locker’s free ‘trial account’ limits you to listing three digital assets and two beneficiaries. Lifehacker have a post on Legacy Locker here and Entrustet here. Entrustet lets you assign an heir to access your accounts when you pass away. It lets you set up unlimited password-protected accounts to be transferred over to a trusted person upon your passing and lets you decide what will happen to each account.

So don’t leave it until it’s too late. You have a great opportunity to make these decisions now. Do yourself and your family a favour and make some backup arrangements to help deal with your online world in the event of your untimely death. Drop a comment below if you have already made these arrangements and you have some advice for us.

What would happen to your online accounts if you died tomorrow is a post from Tech and Life. If you’re reading it in full elsewhere, it’s been copied without consent. Please go to Tech and Life to read the original post and many others in the archive.

Further reading: Handling computer accounts after death – Rocket Moms

Image credit: Roy’s funeral