In the face of tragedies like the one that occurred in Crans-Montana, the first thought goes - and must go - to the broken lives and families affected by grief that is impossible to recount. But alongside the human tragedy, there is a less visible and often ignored level that manifests itself in the digital and risks further amplifying the suffering: the management-or failure to manage-thedigital identity of those who are gone.
We live in a time when a person does not just die in the physical world.
He dies leaving behind an intact digital body: social profiles, chats, images, videos, accounts, personal data, traces of life that continue to exist, accessible, observable, sometimes manipulable.
Media sabotage and digital vulnerability
In the days following tragic events, victims' social profiles often become sites of uncontrolled exposure. Misplaced comments, unauthorized sharing, appropriation of images, distorted narratives. In some cases, this leads to real phenomena of digital looting.
Even more serious is the risk of identity theft: accounts hacked, used for fraudulent or sensationalist purposes, personal data stolen or exploited.
All this is happening while families are dealing with the greatest possible trauma.
The digital, which should be a space of memory and respect, thus becomes a site of further symbolic violence.
Families' second battle: big tech
After the bereavement, a silent and wearisome battle often begins: the battle with digital platforms.
Those who have lost a son, a daughter, suddenly find themselves having to interact with complex policies, standardized forms, automated responses. Proving the death. Prove the connection. Wait weeks or months.
Request closure of a profile. Or its memorialisation. Or access to content to retrieve memories.
Each platform has different rules. None are really designed for the time of mourning.
And so, while everything has stopped in real life, in digital nothing stops.
This is the digital legacy: it exists, it has emotional, legal and identity value, but it is often out of control and difficult to access for those who would be most entitled to it.
Digital death is not a future issue
For a long time we have talked about digital death as something that would come "someday."
The truth is that day is already here.
Today there are hundreds of millions of profiles belonging to deceased people. Within a few decades there will be billions. And every unmanaged profile is a potential space for abuse, loss, conflict.
Digital death is not a technical problem: it is legal, ethical, psychological, and social.
And it affects everyone, regardless of age.
Zephorum's role: protect, cherish, remember
At Zephorum we work every day on this fragile boundary.
We know how difficult it is for those left behind to have to deal with even the digital while the pain is still alive. We know how important it can be to protect an identity, to secure memories, to make conscious decisions about what remains and what does not.
Our job is not to erase.
It is to care.
Because remembrance needs a protected space.
Because grief needs human time, not care tickets.
Because technology, if designed responsibly, can become a tool for processing, not violence.
Tragedies like the one in Crans-Montana remind us that behind every profile is a person. And behind every person, a web of affection that deserves respect, even - and especially - online.
The future of memory is a collective responsibility.
And it begins with how we choose to treat those who can no longer defend themselves.
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