How to Prepare for Your Digital Death

by Amy Kniss

Your mother always warned you to wear clean underwear, lest you (or she) be humiliated when you're caught dead in dirty drawers. Dying before clearing away your dirty digital laundry (like unfiltered IM, politically incorrect emails and overall TMI) is just as bad if not worse, since it colors how everyone in your social network remembers you.

Those of us stretched thin over social networks -- with multiple email accounts and never-ending status updates -- have much to lose if we don't take the proper precautions to protect our online legacy. Unless we plan ahead we risk being (at best) being forgotten or (at worst) over-exposed in front of our fellow social networkers. (Imagine mum finding her way in to your "Direct Message" tweets to your former flame.)

Dressing as a vampire, zombie or other specimen of undead on Halloween provides a playfully haunting reminder of our own mortality. Vampires and zombies fear neither death nor social shunning; if only the rest of us were so lucky.

But for mere mortals who need to think ahead, read on for instructions on prepping for your own digital death. If you want to keep your family from realizing that you really were the black sheep and save your postmortem reputation -- online -- keep reading and embrace your digital death like a zombie on Halloween.

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