What the Dickens: post-mortem privacy and intergenerational trust

Schafer, Burkhard, Briggs, Jo, Moncur, Wendy, Nicol, Emma and Azzopardi, Leif (2023) What the Dickens: post-mortem privacy and intergenerational trust. Computer Law and Security Review. ISSN 0267-3649 (In Press)

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Abstract

The paper argues that protecting post-mortem privacy is not solely beneficial for the deceased and their relatives but enables intergenerational data-sharing. However, legal approaches alone are unlikely to generate the trust required and need to be supplemented with tools that assist data subjects in controlling what data they risk sharing more efficiently and, which they prefer to delete. Using the example of Dickens's “Bonfire of letters” as an example, we argue that the main challenge for law and digital technology is the cumulative risk of data breadcrumbs, which are likely to be individually harmless. Based on research within the EPSRC project “Cumulative Revelations of Personal Data”, we discuss how our findings indicate possible avenues to assist in more efficient intergenerational data sharing.

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