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Online, Tim McLean still smiles defiantly from his MySpace page, boasting about his tattoos and rock-hard body, more than a week after the 22-year-old was brutally murdered and beheaded on a Greyhound bus to Winnipeg.
Long after our bodies die, traces of ourselves linger online: a Facebook profile, some comments on a blog, not to mention questionable photos and videos.
It's hard enough for the living to control what's out there – Facebook alone spurs one privacy scandal after another – but it becomes nearly impossible once someone dies. This time, it's not the users who suffer the consequences, but the people they leave behind.
Pam King still hasn't fully recovered from the battle to shut down her son's MySpace page after he was killed by a train last fall.
Tyler King, 18, had 164 friends on MySpace when he died. After the accident, his page was overrun by teenage mourners posting their grief.
"It was unhealthy for the kids to keep posting, it's not part of the natural grieving process," says King, who tried to cancel Tyler's account.
She'd already deactivated her son's Facebook profile after finding his password. ("Deactivating" isn't the same as erasing: the information is still there, but hidden.)
King emailed MySpace several times before she got a reply, asking for proof of Tyler's death. She sent a link to his death notice, but never heard back. The page came down after the Star contacted the site.
"They didn't shut it down because I was a mom, they did it because they didn't want the bad publicity," King says. "It was a six-week period of unnecessary frustration at a time when I really didn't need it."
More and more of what we consider our identity is online, says Michael Geist, Canada research chair of Internet and e-commerce law at the University of Ottawa. With each extra account or upload, it gets harder to cover the tracks.
"The Internet is the technology that never forgets," he says. Everything we post is annexed by a wide network of search engines that keep information alive, even after we die.
What happens to it then – well, that depends. The law doesn't address this morbid side of the Web, leaving companies mostly free to set the rules. But families can have their say, provided they know to push for it.
A Facebook page for Cory Mintz, one of three friends killed when a car crashed into a river in the Muskoka area early July, drew heavy traffic after the accident until it mysteriously disappeared.
In most cases, however, what's online, stays online, indefinitely.
Unlike Web memorials built to honour loved ones, social network profiles, blogs and email accounts offer an intimate glimpse into the lives of the deceased. Photos and notes blend into a narrative of dramas and dilemmas, love and loss.
For some, the familiar sights bring comfort, much like a child's bedroom kept exactly as it was on the day they died.
Still, many say online immortality – for themselves or their loved ones – is a scary thought.
As the plugged-in population grows older, it will "raise different questions about who owns our personal data in the Web," says Geist, the technology expert.
In Canada, user information is protected under the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act. It prevents companies from sharing personal information without the user's consent, even after death.
But though the act states people have the right to review their personal information, it doesn't say if it can be accessed by next of kin.
The fate of our online selves rests on the contracts we accept when signing up for a service, says Valerie Lawson, spokesperson for the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada.
More than three-quarters of Canadians have access to the Internet, according to research by Ipsos Reid. A report by Toronto-based Solutions Research Group shows one in four Canadians has a Facebook profile.
Yet few companies have provisions to deal with users' deaths. Most, like MSN, rely on accounts timing out from inactivity, effectively shutting them down.
Yahoo!'s policy made the news in 2004 when the family of a soldier killed in Iraq sued the company for the contents of his email. U.S. courts ordered Yahoo! to hand over the messages. Though the company complied, its stance remains unchanged: family members can terminate an account with proof of death, but they can't access it.
"We don't give anyone, including immediate family, access to an individual's Yahoo! accounts," says spokesperson Kelley Benander.
"The commitment Yahoo! makes to every person who signs up for an account is to treat their online activities as confidential, even after their death. We deeply sympathize with grieving families, but ultimately our commitment remains to our users."
Gmail will shut down an account, but only with power of attorney. Facebook puts dead members' profiles in "memorial state," stripped of contact information and blocked from everyone but friends.
MySpace keeps all profiles up and running. It works with concerned families "on a case-by-case basis," a system that critics say adds layers of red tape to a difficult situation.
But for every upset relative, there are hundreds of people fascinated by the online dead. Just ask the more than 8,000 registered members of MyDeathSpace.com, a website that catalogues MySpace pages of the deceased.
Founded by Mike Patterson, a twenty-something paralegal in San Francisco, the site lists the deaths of some 12,000 people, mostly youths. It is not affiliated with MySpace.
"People are fascinated by death," Patterson says. The pages are "a snapshot in time of who they were – their likes and dislikes, who their friends were – at the time of their death."
Everyone should make sure their online accounts will be taken care of after they die, says Kenneth K. Dort, a Chicago-based lawyer and member of the International Technology Law Association.
"It's important not just for sentimental reasons, but for financial reasons," he says. The switch to paperless banking means that email accounts often contain financial information that could be crucial to loved ones.
Experts say it's not yet clear whether electronic accounts can be passed down in a will. For now, it's easier to keep a list of user names and passwords in a safe, Dort says.
That's a lesson Pam King won't forget. "That's why I wrote down my accounts and passwords for my kids," King said. "Nobody should have to deal with that."
