Digital Afterlife: Who Owns Your Data When You're Gone? - Suresh Sankaran Srinivasan (Transcript)

Read the full transcript of cybersecurity expert Suresh Sankaran Srinivasan’s talk at TEDxAsia Pacific U, Oct 29, 2025.

Editor’s Note: In this thought-provoking talk, cybersecurity expert Suresh Sankaran Srinivasan explores the overlooked reality of our “digital afterlife,” highlighting how our personal data, social media presence, and digital footprints persist long after we pass away. He challenges us to consider the ethical, legal, and personal implications of this digital legacy and argues for the urgent need to create “digital wills” and stronger policies to ensure our digital existence can be respectfully concluded.

Listen to the audio version here:

The Digital Lives We Leave Behind

SURESH SANKARAN SRINIVASAN: If you try losing your phone for an hour, tell me how comfortable you get. But seriously, on a show of hands, how many of us have felt that punch in the gut feeling if we lost or misplaced our phone at home or office for an hour? That’s a fair size.

Why? Why do we panic so much? Oh, I lost my phone, my messages, my mails, my Insta, my ex, my calls, and I’m still keeping it at a decent space because this is TEDx. I’m still not going into 16 plus zone. Let’s put it that way.

We Are the Most Documented Species in History

So let’s, before we get on to what I really want to talk to you all about, let’s first understand that we probably are the most, I would say, documented species in the history. Why do I say so?

What’s our population? Human beings? 8 billion roughly as of today. Do you know there are about 5.6 billion people connected to the Internet as of today? That’s around 68 to 70 percent, give or take. Out of that 5.6 billion, there are about 5.4 billion social media users.

We churn out roughly around 300 GB plus mails every day. We do about 16 GB searches. We do about 500 MB of video streaming every minute on YouTube. So these are some of the statistics.

Now, how many passwords per person? How many passwords would any of you have? The average is around 255, right? The average household smart devices, including your Alexas or smart assistants, your smart watches, so on, it’s around 17 to 21 per household. This is the kind of digital exposure that I’m talking about. This is what we all are exposed to. This is pretty much what we live in.

The Physical Realm and the Digital Realm

So today, if you take a human life, you can split it into two halves. You can split it in the physical realm and the digital realm, right? We have a life in the digital realm, we have a life in the physical realm.

So then comes a very good question. We all know that, okay, we die and we move on and we know our physical bodies get disposed off as per our faith, whichever way it is. What happens to our digital self? Ever thought about it? What exactly happens to our digital self? I mean, there’s so much of digital presence. What do we do? Let’s probably explore that.

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Understanding the Layers of the Internet

But before we explore that, let’s first understand what internet looks like. Now, all of us think we understand internet. Does anybody here understand the actual construct of the internet?

The internet technically has got three layers, if I can put it that way. The one above the surface is what we all see, which is our mails, apps, social media, chat, so on and so forth. That’s pretty much what we see, what we can see.

And the next question obviously would be, what is it that we can’t see? What we can’t see has got two layers to it. Most of you here would have gone to some platform and the platform would have said log in using Google, log in using Facebook, log in using Insta, whatever, whatever. How does that happen?

It happens because of a technology called API. API fetches, API is essentially an interface between two applications. It allows application A to fetch data from application B. Now, whether it is for authentication, whether it is for any other purpose. Now, what exactly happens is it fetches a lot of information along with that authentication and that authentication remains there, right?

The Deep Web: What You Don’t Know You Don’t Know

Here comes an interesting question. How many of you know how many places you have credit card subscriptions switched on? If I ask you on top of your mind right now, can you tell me how many platforms do you have credit card or debit card or any payment information saved, which does an auto subscription renewal? Top of the mind number.

Now these are all the unknowns and the unseen and this is what is called deep web. Deep web essentially is your browser cache, we all browse, right?

The Dark Web: Where Your Data Ends Up

Whether it is on the phone, laptop, whatever, you have a cache there. So browser cache, your images have metadata. Your images capture metadata like location and a host of other, your device details so on and so forth. So your images have metadata, your API data, which I spoke about, API is how you fetch, your application permissions.

How many applications do you have on your phone right now, quick? Do you remember all the permissions you gave it? So the application permission, these are all unseen and once you do it, we forget about it. That’s human. That’s our nature, right? So that’s your deep web.

Now then comes the absolute underbelly of the internet. It’s called the dark web. Now what exactly happens in dark web? Dark web is where a lot of information about us finally goes and lies down, which is usernames and passwords, DNA information, your personally identifiable information, blah, blah, blah.

This is where, let’s for a conversation sake say malicious people — I don’t want to use the term hackers here, because it’s got a good terminology, it’s got a good meaning to it. So let’s for the purpose of this conversation, say malicious people go and trade information. What information do they trade, yours and mine? Where do they get it from? They get it from everywhere that we put it, simple as that, we put this information out and they get it.

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A Personal Wake-Up Call

I’m a career cyber person, I’ve been in cyber for 25 years, I’ve done critical infrastructure protection and all of that stuff. But this reality hit me during the pandemic, when I very closely saw certain events, and that made me think that if I am to die tomorrow, my phone will still be on, my social media accounts, my digital presence, everything is going to take, my GPS, whatever GPS data so far has been there, it’s going to be there, all my digital data is going to be there.

I have not told anybody, I have not created a list, nobody knows what my digital presence is and how to undo it. So that presence continues and this became a reality when I saw a friend of mine losing his wife to pandemic, couldn’t even say a bye, but her social media presence lives on even today, he gets a memory of her because the social media platform throws it back. So he doesn’t get a closure. His daughter doesn’t get a closure.

I have lost colleagues, not to the pandemic to other eventualities and their professional and personal social media accounts are on, made me think, as human beings, we know what at least happens to the physical body when we die, what is afterlife, we don’t know. But we really don’t know what happens to our digital persona.

Digital Wills and the Monetisation of Grief

Do we create digital wills? Do we create a list somewhere for people to think? This is a conversation to be had, I will tell you why, because platforms, digital platforms, especially today are now monetizing grief. There is actually a patent filed to create chatbots of people who have passed away, using the persona of people who have passed away. So if you have lost somebody, you can actually create a chatbot of them and there’s a patent that’s already filed for that technology. So people are monetizing grief, platforms are being developed to remember things, but they are not designed to forget things. That’s the way technology is evolving.

The Implications: Cyber Risk and Legal Angles

So when you look at it as an implication or an impact perspective, you’re talking about four layers, you’re talking about a cyber risk layer. So all this information, the simple question is, okay, my data is out there, what’s the big deal? If your data is out there, it’s still living, which technically means it is used by fraudsters. It is used for identity theft, it is used for fraud, it is used for a lot of things. That’s a cyber risk angle of it. The legal angle of it is, it is your data.

The Legal, Moral, and Philosophical Dimensions of Digital Death

There is no legal framework right now, which allows your near and dear ones to go and take it off. There’s no law anywhere, at least not prominent enough, there could be some bits and pieces here and there, but nothing, which very clearly gives people the right to plug out of the digital ecosystem.

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Then comes a moral angle. Is it right to still replay my memories after I’m gone, when I have not given consent for that? If let’s say you lose a near and dear one and tomorrow you see their memories flashing without even they choosing for it, is it the right thing? There’s a morality angle to it.

Finally, there is a philosophical angle to it, which is, when do we get closure? Death is about closure. Death is about dignity. Right? So don’t I and don’t all of us deserve that dignity? Just like how we dignify the physical death part of it, the death needs to be dignified in the digital realm as well.

What Can We Do?

So this needs to be discussed in family rooms. I mean, so the obvious question is, okay, so what do we do? What we do typically is we need to first acknowledge that there is a problem. I don’t think we have still acknowledged that this is a problem to solve. We still think that, yeah, it will go away, it will not, it will continue.

So acknowledging that it’s a problem, discussing it in family rooms, discussing it in board rooms, discussing it in policymaking rooms at every level. And the biggest thing is to have awareness, what each one of us can do. So next time when you put out information, at least be aware that you’re doing it out of conscious choice. At least you know that I’m voluntarily putting it out.

Next time when you install an app, know that they are going to access your data, your information. You know that, you’re aware of that. That’s one part of it. The other part of it is we definitely need a policy ecosystem, there has to be legislations around it. There needs to be a legal framework for somebody to plug out of the digital realm after their death. If it means a digital will, if it means having sunset clauses in the digital platform ecosystem, that needs to happen.

Because like I said, death needs to leave stories, not server logs. Death needs to leave memories, not metadata. While the afterlife is uncertain, we don’t know what afterlife is, the digital afterlife definitely is undeniable. And what should remain there is for us to choose. Thank you very much.

Digital Afterlife: Who Owns Your Data When You’re Gone? – Suresh Sankaran Srinivasan (Transcript)