How to deal with your digital heritage?

In modern society, almost everyone has their digital accounts. But how to deal with these digital accounts left by the departed has become a concerning issue in China. Many people have never thought over that before.

According to lawyers, no exact laws have been enacted to tackle with these digital heritages in China. However, some lawyers do suggest people leave their wills about their digital heritages

Network digital property assets refer to all types of property assets that are presented in a digital form independently existing in the network such as WeChat, Weibo, Alipay, online shop, game account, as well including text, pictures, audio or video. Once people post on the Internet, it belongs to their network digital property assets.

Memory may disappear with the person, however, on the Internet, no matter what people have done or left, these traces will never disappear. Most people did not think about accidentally dying when they signed up for these online accounts at the beginning. These records are where people save their digital property assets online.

WeChat.

In the Civil Law of the People's Republic of China, “web virtual property” was formally written in as a civil right in March 2017, which means that social account numbers have been included in the scope of legal protection. People have the legal foundation to enjoy ownership of their online virtual property.

Fang Zhengyu, a lawyer of Shanghai New Mai Law Firm, said that the online platform for providing services must make the relevant rules for users, which is an inevitable trend. It is necessary to combine the continuous development of society to formulate a series of rules that can protect the order of the entire network and even the real economy.

Fang also suggested that people do not evade their digital asset issues. The users should face and arrange them as soon as possible. "It is best to have a will, which you can send to a certain organization. After your death, the people on your will can get this related information and deal with it. We hope that more Internet companies can provide options and formulate rules whether they can delete or destroy all the users data. Hopefully it can make more people aware of this issue,” Chinanews reported.

(CGTN)