Immortality on the Internet: What happens to your social networking accounts when you die?

A few years ago my old friend Michael Greenway passed away in a terrible car accident. I am reminded of him every time I hear Sublime's "Santeria" because Mike called me once in the fourth grade to tell me it was on the radio and we sang the lyrics back and forth to each other. But, even if I didn't have the music, I am often reminded of Mike because he still pops up under Friends on my Facebook page. His profile is exactly how he left it. It still says he's a Carnegie Mellon student, it still has the somewhat angsty picture of him in only an A-shirt with a shaved head, and people still write on his wall, wishing him happy birthday and stating how much they miss him.

A recent visit to Mike's page led me to ponder the vast and growing virtual graveyard of social networking accounts that will never again be updated. What happens to your accounts when you pass? Should your family be granted access to your accounts, if only to make sure people don't leave inflammatory comments about you floating in cyberspace? Should you leave usernames and passwords in your will? Ensuring that someone can un-tag any unflattering photos of you posted posthumously? And, will the World Wide Web get crowded over the years as it accrues more and more dead people's blogs, facebook pages and twitter babble until it grows cumbersome and excrutiating, like the Beltway during rush hour?

Thinking about this has got me considering my social networking legacy. No photo or comment can be taken lightly. Call me vain, but I don't, for example, want to pass unexpectedly with a photo of me humping a fiberglass dolphin as my profile picture. Similarly, I don't wish to be caught cringing in the afterlife because my final tweet read, "Woke up bloated and hungover. Think I'll catch the Project Runway marathon and order lo mein...or maybe pork fried rice."

Tweet, post, friend and share with caution people because you never know when your plug will get pulled.