There is a death certificate for the family register. So who files your death certificate on the internet? Why do contracts live on even after a person has died? The 'other death' faced by the digital society
Why do contracts live on even after a person has died?
The 'other death' faced by the digital society
The other day, I came across a post.
It was about someone who lost their wife and struggled for months to sort out her subscriptions and online services.
The contract holder is dead.
Yet, the contract lives on.
Even if you cancel the credit card, the bills keep coming.
Even if you know the ID and password, the wall of two-factor authentication stands in your way.
You are forced to submit death certificates and family registers over and over, and just when you think you've finally reached a representative, you are transferred to yet another department.
Reading this story, I felt that this is not a matter of whether individual companies are good or bad, but a systemic problem that society as a whole is facing.
The world has changed in just 30 years
Looking back, it has only been about 30 years since the internet became widely available.
It was only after the turn of the millennium that always-on connections became the norm.
Smartphones became widespread even later than that.
Humanity has a long history, but the current internet society is extremely new.
However, in these 30 years, the internet space has grown explosively.
Now we use it for
shopping
banking
photo storage
Work
Hobbies
Relationships
Entertainment
are mostly conducted in online spaces.
It is no exaggeration to say that another society has been formed in parallel with the real world.
Modern people have two lives
In the past, a person's life existed only in the real world.
But today, it is different.
The real self and the online self.
We have two existences.
For example, we have
email addresses
SNS accounts
cloud storage
subscription contracts
online shopping accounts
.
Moreover, these contain vast amounts of personal information and financial value.
In other words, modern people possess what could be called a 'digital personality'.
Even after death, your digital persona does not disappear.
The problem starts here.
In the real world, once a death certificate is filed, death is legally confirmed.
However, this does not happen in cyberspace.
Even after death,
accounts remain
contracts remain
data remains
billing may continue
in some cases.
In other words,
a state occurs where you are dead in the real world, but continue to live in the digital world
This is a problem that did not exist in past societies.
The biggest issue is identity verification.
Companies have their own circumstances as well.
If they were to cancel a contract just because someone called and said,
'The contract holder has passed away, so please cancel it,'
then fraud through impersonation would become rampant.
This is a significant challenge for digital platforms.
We must find a way to balance security and convenience.
That is why companies require
family registers
identification documents
death certificates
and the like.
However, the procedures differ from company to company.
The bereaved family must repeat the same explanation to dozens of companies.
This is a significant burden on both the bereaved family and the companies.
The essence of the problem is the lack of a 'family register on the internet'
Here, we realize something important.
In the real world, there is a family register system.
The state certifies both birth and death.
However, that does not exist in the internet space.
In other words,
'Is this person alive?'
'Have they died?'
There is no common foundation to publicly certify these facts.
Therefore, companies have no choice but to perform their own independent verification.
The limits of leaving it to private enterprises
The current system is
Google has its own way,
Apple has its own way,
SNS platforms have their own ways,
and subscription companies have their own ways of handling it.
Large corporations can set up dedicated help desks.
However, this is difficult for small and medium-sized enterprises.
As a result, a significant disparity in how these situations are handled emerges.
Isn't this fundamentally a matter of social infrastructure rather than an area where companies should be competing?
Perhaps a 'digital death certificate' is necessary.
What we need in the future,
is a 'digital death verification system'
linked to death in the family register,
I believe.
At the moment a death certificate is accepted,
within the scope of what the individual consented to while alive,
the death would be notified to relevant businesses.
Companies could then process the information with confidence.
Bereaved families would also not have to go around to dozens of different companies.
Billing and data should be considered separately.
What is important here is,
Separate the suspension of billing from the deletion of data.
Photos and writings of the deceased are precious memories for the bereaved family.
It is a problem if everything disappears the moment someone dies.
However,
It is also a problem that billing for unused services continues even after death.
Therefore,
The first step is to stop billing.
The second step is for the heirs to decide on data processing.
That would be more rational.
New challenges for the digital society
The systems of the 20th century were basically designed only for the physical world.
But we in the 21st century are different.
We live in both the physical space and the digital space.
Yet, the systems regarding death only deal with the physical world.
This gap is now creating various problems.
We are at the entrance to a new era
SNS after death.
Leftover photo data.
Accounts that do not disappear.
Subscriptions that do not stop.
These are all different faces of the same problem.
It is,
how the digital society handles human death
the problem of.
The internet has become the foundation of society.
If so, human death must also be handled appropriately within the digital society.
Are we not now entering an era where we should create such a system?