A will for your facebook account? It might not be as strange as if seems. Most Americans spend hours online posting pictures on facebook, writing a blog about their personal views or how-to tips or even create a website. What will happen to these sites when you pass? For emotional reasons you may want to decide who is able to post article or comments on your pages. If your sites generate income, then even more so do you need to determine who is the moderator and what you want to be done with your sites. The first decision you will have to make is whether or not you want to keep the web site up and running after you are gone. Even if you decide it should be shut down, there are things you need to prepare for. First, you’ll need to select someone to shut things down for you and provide them with a contact list and a set of instructions, including whether or not you want your web site saved to disc for posterity. If you have young children, such a keepsake memory might be a good idea. In addition, it needs to contain the details for your web hosting service and passwords and contact details for any advertising or affiliate programs you might have operating. Perhaps the most important issue is password information. For this you want to make sure you have someone you can trust. There is an Internet web site called Dead Man’s Switch that automates this process for you if you have no one to handle it. What happens is the system starts kicking into action when you begin failing to reply to emails. You store your contact information on the site – which has adequate security – and it begins the process of notifying whomever you want notified. If you want to keep the web site up, you’ll need to select someone to manage it. They’ll need the same kinds of contact information you would need to record and store should you want the site shut down. If you have a life partner who knows little about your Internet business, a discussion of how she or he would want things handled in the event of your passing is highly appropriate. In this way, you can take more time to teach your partner what he or she needs to know to run the site, or to whom they can turn for help. Finally, there’s the matter of an obituary. If you’ve had your web site up for awhile you have undoubtedly made contacts, some of which may have become personal as well as business related. The Internet stretches across the globe and a friend in China will never see the announcement in your local paper. There are Internet businesses that can handle this for you. You simply need to supply them with a list of people to contact and they will email those who should know once the company has been informed of your passing. While planning for anything involving your own death can be stressful, doing so will help alleviate the burdens of those left behind.
