That’s a good point.
To clarify:
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accounts are not deleted by iNat or iNat staff if they are dormant. So if a user passes away, the content will remain there unless someone gains access to the account.
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making that statement has no legal weight. It might let your next of kin know your wishes, but that’s it. In that case I’d let your next of kin know your wishes beforehand in a will or some other method.
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iNat’s legal counsel has told us we don’t really have the means to confirm that a deceased person owns a specific account, so we don’t really investigate these claims unless they’re brought to us by next of kin, and in that case we’d consult our lawyers and discuss next steps. We have written some blog posts about deceased users, but in those cases they were known to us personally.