[herodotus]

I do not see a problem with you taking over the domain. The respectful thing to do is to permanently erase the previous owners files without reading them.

There is no need for you to memorialize the deceased owner. In fact, I think it would be disrespectful to do so.

When my wife was dying, she explicitly asked me to permanently delete her emails. I did this with great sadness, but I did not read them out of respect for her wishes.

[jefftk]

> The respectful thing to do is to permanently erase the previous owners files without reading them.

We're not talking about accidentally getting someone's old hard drive: this is a public-facing website, the kind of thing people generally create because they want the public to be able to read what they've written.

[13of40]

It's not even that. When you buy a domain, it's not like you get control of the content it used to point to as well. There's nothing for OP to delete.

[jefftk]

Sorry, I was responding to the claim that it was disrespectful to read what the previous owner had posted

[mavhc]

can be if they used that domain as an email address to log into things

[herodotus]

Thanks for pointing this out: I got the mistaken impression that the OP had access to the previous owners files.