Digital Death: What happens with our data after we die?

Last Fall, Facebook hit a milestone: over one billion active users.

In eight years the giant of social media, and those that followed, have changed the way we communicate and live.

Gone are the days when we only keep physical artifacts like photo albums, journals, home movies and tape recordings.

A new generation now stores their entire life histories in the cloud and password-protected databases.

So what happens to all of our virtual thoughts and assets after we're gone?

And who, if anyone, should have the right to access it?

As Caroline van Vlaardingen found out, it's a loaded and often emotional question increasingly being asked by families and the courts.

And it will only become more important as new companies launch services to keep us digitally alive long after we're dead.

Watch DIGITAL DEATH on CTV Montreal at noon and 6 p.m. on Thursday, February 28th.