[627467]

There may be different opinions but legal and customs shows that (in most jurisdictions), unless the deceased has made legal arrangements otherwise, their property is inherit by next of kin, including letters, diaries, etc. Why would content on Facebook be any different?

[michaelt]

Because in the modern age, electronic messages are partly like letters or diaries (which would be passed on to next of kin) and partly like phone calls or in-person conversations (which would not be passed on to next of kin).

[627467]

How could you pass phonecalls or conversations unless they are being recorded? (Wait, are they being recorded?! /s)

I mean, I understand that some people think that our relationships to phones and digital world somehow are deeper/more-private than any other medium we had before...

But I'm pretty sure people felt that diaries and love letters were pretty private before Facebook or Bell's invention.

Phone companies werent willingly storing our "content" to profit from it. They were storing calls because of court orders.

Facebook is storing our data for posterity and I have a right to request Facebook to rid/edit that data (even if it's just marking it as "deleted") and think my next of kin should inherit the same rights I had over that data.

[bloak]

That's very succinct and I agree.

It does make me wonder, however, about the case of a psychiatrist or psychoanalyst who keeps paper notes on what his private patients have spoken about, and then dies suddenly in an accident together with his immediate family, so his next of kin and heir turns out to be a distant cousin, who happens to be an irresponsible teenage drug addict, say. Could anything be done to block the transfer of those paper notes in a case like that?

Perhaps a self-employed psychiatrist ought to have appointed a law firm as their executor and left instructions that patient notes should be destroyed rather than transfered to the next of kin, but if they'd forgotten to do that?

[1_800_UNICORN]

Doctor-patient privilege applies even after death, and while I couldn't easily find anything online, my assumption is that there's a process in place to handle scenarios like this so that patient data doesn't end up in unauthorized hands.

[bloak]

I've not heard of "doctor-patient privilege". Is that a US thing?

I was thinking of a private practitioner of complementary medicine, who might not be officially qualified or officially registered or officially anything at all, at least in England, where professions are not usually regulated. I'm fairly certain privacy would nevertheless be expected...

I've just asked someone who knows a bit more about English law than me. Apparently there's a common-law tort of breach of confidence, which would probably prevent an heir from revealing what's in the (pseudo)therapist's notes and might allow someone to get an injunction to stop the papers from being inherited in the first place. Interestingly, data protection probably wouldn't have much to do with this hypothetical case, nor with the hypothetical case in which a random person finds a box of confidential notes/letters in a hedge.

[windows_tips]

There is a "HIPPA"[0] law that is often referenced in the US when seeking medical services. Presumably it really only applies to interstate insurers, but is often believed to "protect" some information from being shared without a "patient's" consent.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_Insurance_Portability_a...

[dragonwriter]

> There is a "HIPPA" law

HIPAA, actually.

> Presumably it really only applies to interstate insurers,

It applies to all public and private health insurers/payers and healthcare providers in the United States. (Source: over a decade working in roles with some involvement in HIPAA compliance for a large, public, intrastate healthcare payer.)

Specifically, relating to the protection of information after death, the HIPAA Privacy Rule protects information for 50 years after death, but does give full control to the decedent's “personal representative” as determined by applicable law during that period.