Opinion: The rise of digital death
Immortalising the dead through code risks short-circuiting the fragile, necessary process of grief
By Viiveck Verma
For most of human history, death was a quiet retreat from the public sphere, a slow vanishing of the self from memory, record, and ritual. But in the 21st century, death has acquired an unsettling permanence. Thanks to our always-online lives, we now leave behind a digital wake, an intricate mosaic of emails, photos, passwords, bank accounts, social media profiles, playlists, subscriptions, health records, and more. We die, but our data doesn’t. This phenomenon, commonly referred to as ‘digital death’, poses a deceptively simple question: What happens to your digital self after your biological self ceases to exist? The answer is far murkier than most people realise.
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The majority of individuals have no digital will, no posthumous instructions, and no idea what rights their families have, or don’t have, over their digital assets. Even as we increasingly move our lives online, the legal, ethical, and emotional terrain of digital death remains dangerously underexplored. The gap is especially pronounced in India, where tech adoption has skyrocketed but digital estate planning remains rare. And it’s not just a personal or familial issue, it’s a societal one.
Ghost Accounts
Consider this: Facebook currently hosts more than 30 million profiles of deceased users, and by some estimates, the dead may outnumber the living on the platform within the next few decades. These ghost accounts linger, often sending birthday reminders or showing up in memory slideshows, a macabre kind of algorithmic déjà vu. On platforms like Instagram or LinkedIn, there’s no standardised way for heirs to take control of a deceased user’s profile unless explicit access has been granted beforehand. Google, to its credit, allows users to designate trusted contacts to handle their data after death, but this feature is neither well-known nor widely used.
Digital Legacy
The consequences of this ambiguity are real and wrenching. Grieving families are often locked out of essential accounts. Photos, videos, and messages, modern-day heirlooms, become inaccessible. Worse, digital assets with financial value, cryptocurrency, domain names, monetised YouTube channels, and online businesses may be lost entirely. Legal battles are not uncommon, and tech companies, governed more by opaque terms of service than by human empathy, frequently act as final arbiters. India’s legal system offers little clarity. The Information Technology Act, 2000, makes no provision for digital legacy, and there is no overarching data protection law that clearly lays out the rights of the deceased. The proposed Digital Personal Data Protection Act (DPDPA), still navigating legislative bottlenecks, may offer some relief in the future, but its current framing remains focused on the living. Meanwhile, the Indian Succession Act is rooted in an era when property was physical and a legacy was something you held in your hand.
Digital death is not just about data, it’s about dignity. It’s about acknowledging that even in pixels and passwords, there is legacy
Perhaps the deeper issue is cultural. Death, in many societies, remains taboo, discussed in hushed tones and deferred indefinitely. To talk of one’s digital afterlife, to plan for a virtual end, feels morbid or unnecessary. But in a world where your Google Drive may contain more of your inner life than your physical diary ever did, avoidance is no longer an option. If you don’t decide what should happen to your data, a corporation will, or worse, no one, will. The stakes are even higher for public figures, journalists, writers, and activists whose digital footprints form part of public memory. In politically volatile contexts like India, where dissent can draw scrutiny, what happens to a deceased activist’s emails or encrypted chats? Who has the right to unlock, preserve, or delete those records? Are they part of private legacy or public history? These are questions we’re ill-equipped to answer today—but must.
Immortalising the Dead
Some technologists argue that we should be building digital legacies that reflect our consent and ethics. Should we allow AI to simulate our likeness after death? Should loved ones be able to chat with AI models trained on our texts and videos? Some companies are already offering grief-tech, if you will. It’s not science fiction anymore. The dead may become digital companions, forever enshrined in virtual memory, with personality traits fine-tuned and voices synthesised. I, for one, find this deeply unsettling. To mourn is to let go. Immortalising the dead through code risks short-circuiting the fragile, necessary process of grief. What we need now is a shift in both policy and practice. India needs clearer legal frameworks that recognise digital assets as inheritable property. We need public education campaigns around digital wills, simple documents that state who gets access to what, and how. We need tech companies to offer more nuanced controls and to treat death not as a terms-of-service violation but as a dignified transition deserving of empathy and clarity.
Ultimately, digital death is not just about data, it’s about dignity. It’s about acknowledging that even in pixels and passwords, there is legacy. We curate our lives online with such care. It’s time we curated our exits, too. Because in the age of the cloud, death is not disappearance. It’s a different kind of presence, one that, if left unguarded, may linger longer than we ever intended.
(The author is founder and CEO, Upsurge Global, co-founder, Global Carbon Warriors and Adjunct Professor, EThames College)
