The Afterlife of Data – What happens to your data when you die?
Feb 05, 2026
The Afterlife of Data – What happens to your data when you die?
Are you ready for an uncomfortable question… What happens to your data after you die? Buckle up. In this episode, Matthew Roberts is joined by Carl Öhman, Associate Professor at Uppsala University and author of The Afterlife of Data, to explore what becomes of our personal information after death and the ethical, political, and cultural consequences of our digital legacies. Tune in as Matt seeks Carl’s perspective on what happens when today’s tech giants gain access to the data of millions of deceased users. Together, they dive into how “death data” might be regulated, monetized, and ultimately controlled. From advertising and memorialized profiles to data ownership and the recording of history, this episode opens Pandora’s box at the intersection of morality, business, and memory. This episode may not have all the answers, but it undeniably has all the questions you should be asking.
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“The book is on one level about this kind of private matter of what should we do with the digital legacy of the dead. But it's also a societal matter. It's not only what should we do with one person's data, but an entire generation. In the next three decades alone, about 2.2 billion people will die. What will we, as a society, do with their data? And in the book, I try to make the argument that this is one of the major battlegrounds for the future of the internet, because who controls these gigantic data archives of the past are essentially also going to control society's access to its collective past. “
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