July 4 • 2019 17
jn

“I would highly recommend assigning a 
designated digital executor in your will 
so your survivors are able to manage your 
technology as simply as possible.”

— RABBI JASON MILLER 

with login credentials and contact 
people for those accounts. This 
is especially important to have 
regarding financial accounts. 
I found it was helpful to send out 
notifications from my father’
s email 
address to the representatives of his 
financial accounts alerting them 
of his death and that I would be 
requesting access to those accounts. 
This simple notification sped up 
closing out or transferring digital 
accounts. Sending notifications to 
individuals who recently sent email 
messages to the deceased’
s email 
accounts is also helpful before 
closing out any email accounts to 
let them know why their messag-
es went unanswered. It’
s helpful 
to keep email accounts open and 
managed for at least a year as this 
will help to close registrations, 
memberships or subscriptions.

DIGITAL DATA
Determining which files, email 
messages, photos and videos to 
keep is a tricky decision. The first 
thing I realized was that my father 
maintained a lot of backup versions 
of his data — both locally on hard 
drives as well as in the cloud. This 
redundant backup situation meant 
that it took a lot of time to deter-
mine which files were duplicates. 
When deciding which photos and 
videos to keep, I realized I already 
had many of those in my own col-
lection, so I didn’
t want to keep 
duplicates. 
You don’
t want to delete digital 
data if you don’
t need to so the rule 
of thumb should be to keep files 
until you’
re completely certain you 
(or future generations) won’
t want 
them. It might be wise to keep all 
digital data for at least a year fol-
lowing the death. For me, it was 
helpful to first organize the data 

(including my father’
s vast digital 
photo collection) before determin-
ing which files to delete.

SOCIAL MEDIA
Managing a deceased loved one’
s 
social media accounts can be one 
of the most important tasks after 
their death. This is relatively new 
territory for survivors, and social 
media companies only recently 
created protocols to handle this. 
Most of the major social media 
companies (Facebook, Twitter, 
Instagram, LinkedIn, etc.) spell 
out the steps necessary for a desig-
nated survivor to either put these 
accounts into an archival mode or 
to shut them down. The instruc-
tions for this are either outlined in 
the terms of service or in the help 
section. Facebook’
s ability to put 
a deceased person’
s account into 
“Remembering” mode has become 
common and is a useful way to 
inform others of your loved one’
s 
death. 
Managing a deceased loved one’
s 
digital life is a big responsibility. 
For me, it has been a rewarding 
experience as I have tried to orga-
nize my late father’
s digital files 
over the past few months. It’
s given 
me a new perspective on his life 
and allowed me to grieve his loss 
while searching through his digital 
photo and video library. This expe-
rience has also allowed me to help 
my father after his death, as I con-
tinue to try to fulfill the command-
ment of honoring one’
s father. ■

Rabbi Jason Miller is the son of the late 

Gary D. Miller, a tech-savvy futurist and 

software designer, who founded Miller 

Systems in 1994. Rabbi Jason is an educa-

tor and entrepreneur, who is the president 

of Access Technology in West Bloomfield. 

Follow him on Twitter at @RabbiJason.

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