Posted on 12/22/2004 5:07:25 AM PST by wallcrawlr
Oh, this is soooo not a good idea.
There was an incident in San Francisco, an ex-marine prevented an assassination attempt. The SF Chron excitedly reported that he was homosexual. The marine had neglected to notify his family of this, and when they found out, he committed suicide. So the way I figure it, it's best to err on the side of privacy. If the marine wanted his family to read his email, he could have left them with his password.
Does the Federal Government continue to deliver mail to those who are deceased? Kinda depends. If you open someone's mail, you committed a Federal Offense.
If granny died, her social security check isn't part of the estate - it has to be sent back.
I guess this could fall under the RIAA guidelines of proprietary content that belongs to the owners (senders) of said email that went unread.
Let them decide if they want to share it with the family.
But death law varies by states.
Also, Yahoo! provided a free service, unlike AOL.
I hope the family will have someone they know and trust look over the emails when they get into that e-mail account- before the immediate family can see them.
Google: Yahoo password crack.
There seems to be no end to the number of people out there who claim to be able to do this.
Let's get his phone records; let's see if we can get the text messages from his cell phone......let's do everything we can to learn about our son now that he is dead, since we never bothered to know him when he was alive.
End of Story!
I did.
You do not know what you are talking about. We had a very ill daughter who died in January. I still have access to her email account and wrote to people out of town who did not know she had died. They appreciated being told.
Be that as it may.
Your daughter was ill for a very long time, so she may have made preparations for her email account.
This marine didn't have that kind of time.
Privacy never ceases when a person dies - they take their memories and thoughts with them. Email, with its expectation of privacy, is often an extension of those.
The fundamental question is this - do we know for certain if he wanted to divulge everything in his account to his family?
If we don't, we should err on the side of his privacy. It's for the sake of his dignity.
If the family gets all of his property including postal mail upon death, they should also get his email.
Those responsible for returning a deceased serviceman's possessions to the next of kin have been known to "censor" or "lose" potentially embarassing items. For instance, if it's known that "Joe" was married, it's probably not wise to send along letters from a girlfriend his wife knows nothing about.
How about his email outbox? I'm assuming that once his account is opened up, the family will read that, too. The snail mail equivalent would be recalling all the paper letters he sent while on deployment and giving those to his family, too. There's no precedent that I know for that particular action, but that's exactly what opening his email box would do.
It's a bit of a Pandora's box, I think. The family may read things they wished they had never seen. If the Marine had wanted them to read his email in the event of his death, he would have made provisions for it before deployment.
Let the man rest in peace.
My thoughts exactly.
>>That would still expose Yahoo! to tremendous legal liability if the family were offended by the contents of the box and decided to sue them.<<
No, it wouldn't, because 1) there's no tort I'm aware of called "being offended" and 2) Yahoo owes no legal duty to the parents.
Also to liability from third parties who sent or received email from the son.
All of the emails meant for his family were already sent to them.
Every email in that account that they haven't seen, is from or to a third party.
Nothing good can be gained and memories can be destroyed.
LOL
Well they can try, but that doesnt mean I will do anything workwise :)
Not only that, but they will have to put up with the wife :) and shes formidible :)
But you don't own your adult children --- wanting to hold on is one thing --- but wanting to snoop through everything --- to discover their secrets is another. I know my family could easily answer the secret question to bypass the password --- but all they're going to find in my email is the email we all pass around anyhow --- and a few ads. I would figure if someone makes that secret question something their family can't answer --- they don't want their family given access. What possibly do they think he didn't tell them that they want to investigate now? Im also not curious about my family members' email --- anything they haven't forwarded to me --- too bad --- they didn't include me for whatever reason.
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