"I hereby leave my email to...": Data Usage Control and the Digital Estate

Abstract

In most data control scenarios there is the opportunity for oversight by those who, while perhaps not directly involved in the creation of the data, understand the intended usage of the data. We argue that due to the proliferation of online data and our aging population, data owners will increasingly face requests for data access and usage when such oversight is not present because the original data owner/creator is unavailable (e.g. because of death or incapacitation). We outline the technical and user experience challenges in supporting this data usage scenario, focusing on the online service setting, and highlight some emerging research problems.