The Last Digital Footprint: Rethinking the Right to Privacy and Control over Personal Data in the Digital Afterlife

With the death of an individual, their physical property is disposed of, but their digital footprints remain. Millions of social media accounts continue to generate content and memories that still exist even after a person’s death. This raises questions on the privacy of the deceased, ownership,consent, and the management of the digital remains. This study focuses on the concept of post-mortem privacy and elaborates on the different frameworks for the protection of personal data after an individual’s death, and conducts a comparative analysis of India, the European Union and the United States. This study finds that the existing laws have limited rights for the protection of the deceased and their digital identities and highlights the need for a more balanced framework to safeguard the respect, dignity, privacy and wishes of the deceased person with accommodation of the technological developments.