PBS高端访谈:Facebook推出遗嘱功能:让你选择账户继承人!

 　　HARI SREENIVASAN: Do you have an email account? How about a Facebook page? Bank online? Shop online? Pay your gas, light, or cable TV bill over the internet?

　　I've just laid out more than a half dozen accounts that many of us have, likely each with its own password.

　　These accounts don't die with us. The passwords to each of them, are often times locked away with only one person—the deceased. Which means that valuable online assets could be lost forever—or be found by those looking to exploit them.

　　Take the case of Glenn Williamson, a tech entrepreneur in Portland, Oregon. In August of 2012, he got the worst news possible.

　　GLENN WILLIAMSON: I was in the Philippines speaking at a conference and, you know, when your phone goes off 15 times and it's 3:00 in the morning in the United States, you have a bad feeling. You know it's not a good call.

　　HARI SREENIVASAN: Glenn's 73-year old mother, Lee, had died. As her fiduciary² and as a 25-year veteran of the tech world, it fell to him to manage her online accounts.

　　GLENN WILLIAMSON: I knew my mom, being a cool grandma, was on Twitter. So, I knew she was on Twitter and I knew she had a Yahoo account, so we had a baseline to start, but that's all we knew.

　　HARI SREENIVASAN: After 20 hours of searching, Glenn found 13 different accounts belonging to his mother, including email, social media, and shopping accounts.

　　GLENN WILLIAMSON: So we broke it down into categories: travel, sentimental³ value, security, and basically we searched on about 75 different sites

　　HARI SREENIVASAN: Some had real value.

　　GLENN WILLIAMSON: We got to United, and United did indeed have my mom as a customer and there was 54,000 miles that we were able to retrieve⁴ for our family.

　　HARI SREENIVASAN: All this while he was grieving.

　　GLENN WILLIAMSON: And it's a painful, it's a long process, and everybody means well, but if one more person tells you they're sorry—it's like, okay, I just need to know, did she have an account or not.

　　HARI SREENIVASAN: Williamson and his wife are online savvy⁵, relatively⁶ young and it was still tough to find all those accounts.

　　GLENN WILLIAMSON: So, the average person, especially if the average person is doing it in their 60's, it's a very, very difficult process.

　　HARI SREENIVASAN: Glenn's problems managing his mother's online estate helped inspire him to start a business solution called “WebCease”—an online service that helps people search for their deceased loved ones' digital assets.

　　It uses a person's basic information—like an email address—and finds the major online accounts that are linked to it. And although WebCease won't shut down an account for you, it will tell you what can be done under a website's specific terms-of-service.

　　GLENN WILLIAMSON: My mom had an asset inventory⁷ of her financial accounts. But she didn't have an asset inventory of all things digital, and that's really what we provide to the family, is we provide them at—a high level—a digital asset inventory. So, you can look through it and say, “Oh, my mom was on Amazon and she had iTunes and Marriott and Hyatt, etcetera.” So, that's really the value we provide.

　　HARI SREENIVASAN: WebCease is one of a handful of websites that has sprung up over the last few years—sites like Navigatr, the Doc Safe, Capsoole, My Cyber safe, and Afternote—all of them trying to tackle what is becoming an increasingly common problem.

　　SUZANNE WALSH: Nowadays, everyone keeps their filing cabinets on their computers and they may not have shared the access to that with their families.

　　HARI SREENIVASAN: Suzanne Walsh is an estate lawyer in Hartford, Connecticut.

　　SUZANNE WALSH: I have received panicked calls from family members who don't know passwords, don't know the nature of the online accounts. They simply know mom paid the bills online and they may not even be sure about the bank.

　　HARI SREENIVASAN: Walsh says that the main problem is one of access. In many cases, we have made it virtually illegal for anyone else to use our online accounts.

　　It starts with those terms-of-service agreements; the fine print of the online world. Once the “I agree” button is pressed, it's as good as a contract.

　　SUZANNE WALSH: Many of them prohibit the sharing of passwords and they prohibit third-party access. So, right now, they tend to bar anybody but the account holder⁸ accessing the account.

　　HARI SREENIVASAN: That means —even if the account-holder is dead.

　　Internet service providers say, they're following the letter of the law as spelled out in the 1986 Stored Communications Act, which prohibits anyone from accessing private information online without permission.

　　SUZANNE WALSH: The problem with fiduciary access now is that it may be a violation⁹ of federal privacy law or a computer fraud and abuse act. It may be an actual criminal act to violate the terms of service agreement.

　　HARI SREENIVASAN: But being unable to access or shut down a deceased loved one's accounts could have unforeseen risks, as Glenn Williamson—who spent 20 years in online security—will tell you.

　　GLENN WILLIAMSON: The year after somebody passes is one of the most vulnerable times for identity theft. It's a heinous¹⁰ crime, but what the bad guys do, because death is public record, they'll go out there and they'll comb through recently deceased and they'll create a fake identity, because the deceased don't check email and they don't get the mail.

　　HARI SREENIVASAN: Every year, more than 2 million Americans are the posthumous¹¹ victims of identity fraud.

　　Thieves can use a dead person's information to rack up credit card charges, apply for loans, or even file false tax returns.

　　And much of this information can be found on the internet through something as simple as a shopping account.

　　To date, only nine states have any laws in effect that govern online estate planning.

　　Suzanne Walsh, who chairs a committee on the Uniform Law Commission—an organization which drafts laws it hopes to standardize¹² in all 50 states—is trying to change that.

　　Last year, Walsh's committee finished drafting a bill called the “Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act”, which would give fiduciaries¹³ the same rights over online estates as they now have over physical estates.

　　SUZANNE WALSH: Fiduciaries, traditionally, have access to everything in admin—especially in administering estates. And that used to mean opening up the mailbox, opening up the file cabinet, rifling through the desk. Our act is designed to continue that and facilitate that, given the different nature of the digital assets.

　　HARI SREENIVASAN: The bill was reviewed and enacted¹⁴ by the Uniform Law Commission last July. But it's still up to individual state legislatures to propose it and pass it as law.

　　Although the act has been introduced in eighteen states, so far, only one state—Delaware—has signed the act into law.

　　However, the act is not without its critics. The general counsel of a Washington, DC-based group called “The State Privacy and Security Coalition”—which represents the interests of Google, Yahoo, and Facebook, among others—came out against Delaware's new law, saying, quote, “This law takes no account of minimizing intrusions into the privacy of third parties who communicated with the deceased.

　　This would include highly confidential¹⁵ communications to decedents from third parties who are still alive… who would be very surprised that an executor is reviewing the communications.”

　　But, despite the pushback, Suzanne Walsh is hopeful that her committee's work will be recognized in more state legislatures.

　　SUZANNE WALSH: Widespread enactment¹⁶ is our goal. That's our primary goal. Certainly we hope and expect that it won't take more than a year or two for most of the states to adopt this product.

　　HARI SREENIVASAN: While the states debate the act, some internet service providers have begun proposing their own solutions to the problems raised by digital estates.

　　In 2013, Google introduced a new feature called “Inactive Account Manager”, which would give users the choice of having their accounts transferred to specific people after a set period of inactivity or having them automatically deleted.

　　And last month, Facebook announced their own feature for dealing¹⁷ with digital estate management called “Legacy Contacts”. Users can now choose a Facebook friend to maintain their account after they die, but the designated friend cannot delete the account or respond to messages intended for the deceased. Facebook users also have the option to have their account deleted upon their death.

　　But beyond new user features and state laws, there are steps that people can take now to make the process of digital estate management easier on next of kin¹.

　　First, create an inventory list of all your online accounts and passwords for your fiduciary. Stipulate¹⁸ what to do with your email accounts in a will, and read the terms-of-service agreements, so you can understand how or even if access to your accounts can be granted to someone else.

　　But Glenn Williamson says, no matter what steps you take or what laws are eventually passed, managing a digital estate for a loved one will always be a long, arduous¹⁹, and painful process.

1 kin   

n.家族，亲属，血缘关系；adj.亲属关系的，同类的

参考例句：

• He comes of good kin.他出身好。
• She has gone to live with her husband's kin.她住到丈夫的亲戚家里去了。

2 fiduciary   

adj.受托的，信托的

参考例句：

• A company director owes a fiduciary duty to the company.公司董事应对公司负责受托人责任。
• He was acting in a fiduciary capacity.他以受托人身份行为。

3 sentimental   

adj.多愁善感的，感伤的

参考例句：

• She's a sentimental woman who believes marriage comes by destiny.她是多愁善感的人，她相信姻缘命中注定。
• We were deeply touched by the sentimental movie.我们深深被那感伤的电影所感动。

4 retrieve   

vt.重新得到，收回；挽回，补救；检索

参考例句：

• He was determined to retrieve his honor.他决心恢复名誉。
• The men were trying to retrieve weapons left when the army abandoned the island.士兵们正试图找回军队从该岛撤退时留下的武器。

5 savvy   

v.知道，了解；n.理解能力，机智，悟性；adj.有见识的，懂实际知识的，通情达理的

参考例句：

• She was a pretty savvy woman.她是个见过世面的漂亮女人。
• Where's your savvy?你的常识到哪里去了？

6 relatively   

adv.比较...地，相对地

参考例句：

• The rabbit is a relatively recent introduction in Australia.兔子是相对较新引入澳大利亚的物种。
• The operation was relatively painless.手术相对来说不痛。

7 inventory   

n.详细目录，存货清单

参考例句：

• Some stores inventory their stock once a week.有些商店每周清点存货一次。
• We will need to call on our supplier to get more inventory.我们必须请供应商送来更多存货。

8 holder   

n.持有者，占有者；(台，架等)支持物

参考例句：

• The holder of the office of chairman is reponsible for arranging meetings.担任主席职位的人负责安排会议。
• That runner is the holder of the world record for the hundred-yard dash.那位运动员是一百码赛跑世界纪录的保持者。

9 violation   

n.违反(行为)，违背(行为)，侵犯

参考例句：

• He roared that was a violation of the rules.他大声说，那是违反规则的。
• He was fined 200 dollars for violation of traffic regulation.他因违反交通规则被罚款200美元。

10 heinous   

adj.可憎的，十恶不赦的

参考例句：

• They admitted to the most heinous crimes.他们承认了极其恶劣的罪行。
• I do not want to meet that heinous person.我不想见那个十恶不赦的人。

11 posthumous   

adj.遗腹的；父亡后出生的；死后的，身后的

参考例句：

• He received a posthumous award for bravery.他表现勇敢，死后受到了嘉奖。
• The legendary actor received a posthumous achievement award.这位传奇男星在过世后获得终身成就奖的肯定。

12 standardize   

v.使符合标准，使标准化

参考例句：

• We will extend and standardize legal services and provide effective legal aid.拓展和规范法律服务，积极开展法律援助。
• There is a drive both to standardise components and to reduce the number of models on offer.正在为实现零部件标准化和减少推出的型号数量而努力。

13 fiduciaries   

n.被信托者，受托人( fiduciary的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• We're fiduciaries, we act on behalf of our investors. 我们是受托人，我们代表投资者采取行动。 来自互联网

14 enacted   

制定（法律），通过（法案）( enact的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• legislation enacted by parliament 由议会通过的法律
• Outside in the little lobby another scene was begin enacted. 外面的小休息室里又是另一番景象。 来自英汉文学 - 嘉莉妹妹

15 confidential   

adj.秘（机）密的，表示信任的，担任机密工作的

参考例句：

• He refused to allow his secretary to handle confidential letters.他不让秘书处理机密文件。
• We have a confidential exchange of views.我们推心置腹地交换意见。

16 enactment   

n.演出，担任…角色；制订，通过

参考例句：

• Enactment refers to action.演出指行为的表演。
• We support the call for the enactment of a Bill of Rights.我们支持要求通过《权利法案》的呼声。

17 dealing   

n.经商方法，待人态度

参考例句：

• This store has an excellent reputation for fair dealing.该商店因买卖公道而享有极高的声誉。
• His fair dealing earned our confidence.他的诚实的行为获得我们的信任。

18 stipulate   

vt.规定，（作为条件）讲定，保证

参考例句：

• International rules stipulate the number of foreign entrants.国际规则规定了外国参赛者的人数。
• Some manufacturers stipulate the price at which their goods are to be sold.有些制造商规定出售他们生产的商品的价格。

19 arduous   

adj.艰苦的，费力的，陡峭的

参考例句：

• We must have patience in doing arduous work.我们做艰苦的工作要有耐性。
• The task was more arduous than he had calculated.这项任务比他所估计的要艰巨得多。