What the Dickens: post-mortem privacy and intergenerational trust  

Burkhard Schafer*, Jo Briggs, Wendy Moncur, Emma Nicol, Leif Azzopardi

*Corresponding author for this work

    Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

    3 Citations (Scopus)
    41 Downloads (Pure)

    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.
    Original languageEnglish
    Article number105800
    Pages (from-to)1-9
    Number of pages9
    JournalComputer Law and Security Review
    Early online date2 May 2023
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - 1 Jul 2023

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