How is All Human Life able to store the record of my life, IN PERPETUITY?

• · Most IT experts agree that the cost of data storage will decline exponentially across time. Even in 50 years, the cost of storing your data will be a tiny fraction of the cost today. In agreeing to store your data in perpetuity, All Human Life believes that the liability it is taking on is entirely affordable and sustainable.

• · As long as the human race continues to exist, All Human Life believes there will be a steady stream of new customers whose storage fees will help finance the storage costs of today’s customers.

• · As software evolves, the developers of the most common formats make considerable efforts to ensure backward compatibility with legacy programmes. It is virtually certain that the software formats which are most common today will still be able to be read in 100 years time.

However, it's also true that firms come and go. Whilst we are entirely confident that All Human Life will be in business as long as the human race survives, we recognise that in business nothing is certain. If for any reason we fail to survive, we want to be sure that you do survive, or that at least your life record does. Accordingly, All Human Life is currently negotiating with a number of the world’s oldest academic institutions to put in place a system whereby all existing records will continue to be stored in trust in the unlikely event that the company itself should ever cease to operate. Watch this space for updates.

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Q. How do I transform old photos, old documents, sound recordings, videos etc. into a form which I can upload onto All Human Life?

A. Most high-street photographic chains offer a service which allows photographic prints or any paper documents to be scanned and stored in electronic format on a CD-Rom. Once your photos are on a CD-Rom, you can copy them on to your computer simply by inserting the CD and using the 'copy' and 'paste' commands. When you wish to attach a photo to one of the All Human Life chapters, you can browse your computer's hard disk to find the photo you require, and then click on 'open'. All Human Life allows you to add a caption to each photo, and for the benefit of posterity we strongly recommend you use this facility, giving the date of the photo, the place and the names of the people.

Usually, the high street photographic chain you take your photos to will give you both low resolution and high resolution copies of the photos on the CD-Rom, but make sure this is the case. The files you attach to All Human Life should be low resolution to keep your additional storage costs down.

Of course if you have a scanner, or know someone who does, you can scan photos and documents yourself. You can also make copies using a digital camera. If in doubt, ask a teenager in your family!

Q. What about sound recordings or videos?

A. If you have digital audio or video files, you can attach these to the All Human Life chapters in exactly the same way as you attach image files (see above). If you want to attach audio or video recordings which you only have on tape, you will need to find a supplier who can convert these into electronic files. You should be able to find a supplier in your local Yellow Pages.

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Q. How should I use the printed forms?

A. It is quite possible that there are people who would like to leave a record of their life on All Human Life who are not at all at ease using a computer. If you know such a person, you can print out a set of life record forms and ask the person to fill them in by hand. They will then need to ask a friend or relative – it could be you! - who is at ease with computers and has an e-mail address, to create an account and transpose the forms directly onto the site, using the ‘Creating a life-record for someone else’ page. This page is accessible from ‘My Account’

Q. Will giving my e-mail address mean a flood of unwanted e-mails?

A. The reason we ask for your e-mail address during the registration process is quite simply because an e-mail address is necessarily unique. Other people may have the same name as you, but by definition no-one else can have the same e-mail address. Linking your account to your e-mail address ensures each account remains unique. You’re also much less likely to forget your e-mail address than a new ‘User name’ you’ve just created.

We undertake not to pass on your e-mail address, or indeed any information gathered on the site, to any third-party, for whatever purpose.

Obviously once your life record becomes accessible, then anyone, including commercial companies, can access the data. However, usually your life record will only be accessible after your death, and even the most tenacious salesmen will give up in the face of a dead customer. If you allow access to your life record during your life, remember that your e-mail address does not appear anywhere in your record, so it will be of no interest to spammers.

All Human Life reserves the right occasionally to sell advertising space on the site to advertisers of products and services which may be of particular interest our users, but data on individuals will NEVER be made available to third-parties

We may also do deals with appropriate organisations to get special offers for AHL members. When you register you are asked whether you would wish to receive details of these offers. We know that you have no wish to receive large numbers of unrelated and unsolicited offers, but the power of a large network is that you really can save money on the retail price of goods and services. Where we believe an offer is genuinely in the interests of our members, we will include it in an email. If you are unhappy with what we send you, you can alter your choice via the My Account page at any time.

Q. What are MBs, kBs etc?

A. All computers work using the binary system, meaning the presence or absence of an electric current can signal 1 or 0, the only digits which exist in this system. A 'bit' of data, short for a 'binary digit', is a single '1' or '0'. The small letter 'b' is used as shorthand for 'bit'. A string of 8 bits is called a 'byte'. A capital 'B' is used as shorthand for 'byte'. A kilobyte (kB) is basically (this is a slight simplification) a thousand bytes, a megabyte (MB) is a million bytes, and a gigabyte (GB) is a billion bytes. So 50 low resolution photos, each weighing 70kB, would make up a total weight of 3500kBs, or 3.5MB.

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Q. Who can access my Life Record and when?

A. All Human Life records are primarily intended to be accessible by the descendants of the subject. However, no password can safely be passed on from generation to generation, so all life records will at some point become PUBLICLY accessible; if not they will be lost. Most people will probably only want their record to become publicly accessible after their death. But alternatively, other people may want to share their life records immediately. It's entirely up to you.

Fortunately, none of us knows the date of our death. So if you want the record to be available only after your death, you'll have to hazard a guess! All Human Life allows you to choose the date at which your record becomes publicly available from a drop-down menu. But remember, if you're lucky enough to find in the future that you were overly pessimistic, you can alter the date of accessibility at any time you wish by logging on and coming back to this section.

NO RECORD CAN BE MADE PUBLICLY ACCESSIBLE UNTIL A MINIMUM OF 18 YEARS AFTER THE DATE OF BIRTH OF THE SUBJECT.


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Q. I entered data and it disappeared. Where has it gone ?

A. If you clicked on ‘Save’ then the data has been entered into your record. Each section that you have saved will have an underlined link at the top of the page with the name of the school, job etc whose details you have just entered. Click on the underlined word to access and carry on editing.

If you did not click on ‘Save’ and left the website or used the browser forward and back buttons (the ones like arrows on the top line of your internet explorer) then unfortunately the data has been lost and will need to be re-entered. To avoid this happening again, enter the data and click on ‘Save’ at the bottom of the page. (See also ‘Useful Information’) Your data will then be preserved and cannot be lost (short of global nuclear catastrophe etc).

 

Q. Is paying by credit card secure?

A. When you want to check out, we take all your delivery details on our website. When you are ready to enter your credit card number, you are taken to a separate secure page hosted by Secure Hosting Ltd, that complies with the latest requirements for secure hosting.

You will see a statement during this phase that you are on a secure page and will see the padlock symbol appear at the bottom right of your screen.

Nobody else can see your credit card details during this process and we do not hold them on file.

Secure Hosting use industry standard Internet encryption with 128 bit SSL software developed by RSA Data, and hold a digital certificate from Thawte (an established certification authority) which is compatible with Netscape and Microsoft browsers.

Furthermore, all data stored on the secure server is encrypted again and protected by a firewall, the specification of which has been recognised by the major banks.

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