Email for me has always primarily been a non-personal communication tool. Much like phone calls, it’s rare that I find myself at the keyboard writing out an email unless there’s a specific purpose.

Yes, I’m one of those people that silently rolls their eyes when I answer the phone and hear the dreaded words ‘so what’s been happening…’

I mean sure, there’s probably some kinky stuff stored away somewhere in the vast outlands of however many levels of deletion it takes to actually delete something from an internet based inbox (and even then it’s probably still not completely erased), but for the most part there’s not really anything I’d particularly care about if a family member was to access.

Let alone when I’m dead and gone.

Andrew Ramadge from news.com.au’s technology section ran an article yesterday on ‘What happens to your email when you die?‘. As I read the article I tried to gauge the purpose of it but couldn’t come up with anything other then to encourage naughty husbands (and wives) to scramble for the ‘press this if you want to completely and utterly delete an email but you can still retrieve it at a later date if you want to because we’re information nazis’ button.

Let’s apply the worst case scenario to the ‘What happens to my emails when I’m dead’ scenario;

A husband is rampantly cheating on his wife…

…

…with farm animals.

Not only is he cheating but he also belongs to a animal loving fan fiction site and regularly pens up not-so-fictional stories in his email client for archive purposes before publishing them.

This guy has three kids and puts on the perfect show at home with his family, they don’t suspect a thing.

One day he’s walking along and sees an ad for Whiskas cat food. Completely and hopelessly mesmerised he walks into the path of a bus and dies.

Now after the formalities are out of the way wifey decides she had best get access to his email account just to inform anyone she might have missed of hubby’s passing. So she calls up the webmail host and gets the login details.

‘Ok now there’s Norma, I told her… Jack, he knows… Pete, yep – hmm wonder what’s in this fold-’

‘…’

‘…oh my god.’

‘MUMMY WHAT IS DADDY DOING TO SNUFFLES??!!?’

Now sure her life has just been shattered but what happens next? I mean what are they going to march down to the local cemetery and dig up hubby? Defecate on the gravesite?

The guy’s dead, what does he care?!

This is the worst example I can think of in terms of leaving emails behind that will shatter people you know (if anyone’s got anything leave a comment!), but still doesn’t negate the fact that even if your family did find out your deep dark email inbox secrets, you’re dead!

I can however sort of see a potential problem with re-incarnation religions…

‘you are getting sleeeeepy…’

‘yes…yes I am.’

‘now tell us about your past life’

‘I…I liked animals…. a lot.’

‘um, what?’

‘like a man loves a woman… they were the best times of my li-oh dear god, the emails. I never deleted them. Jesus christ I have to get back.’

‘Um uh… (what do we do??) uh.. when I click my fingers you will come out of-HEY COME BACK!’

‘DAMNIT.’

‘Yeah hi headquarters? Listen I’ve just had another one… where do you want me to send the audit file this time? I’m starting to Australia’s the wrong place for our religion’.

Reading dead emails is only ever going to hurt the reader. Even if the person in question was hiding an alternate life or string of embarrassing moments in their past upon discovering them you’re probably going to be left with more questions that can’t be answered.

Do yourself a favour people, if you suspect someone who died recently had something to hide in their inbox, don’t go and read all their emails – just assume they were doing it.

Besides, if you really want to make someone uncomfortable just do a computer  file search for *.avi. You don’t even have to wait until someone’s passed away.

Every guy has a porn collection stashed away somewhere and if a computer search reveals nothing go have a look at your dvd library.

There’s a reason you don’t remember making three copies of your wedding dvd…

1. A curious email from Michael Trkulja re. suing Google