If you are DF'ed or DA'ed (and I mean properly DA'ed through writing a letter yourself and it being announced) then the situation is that everyone should be shunning you with the exception of necessary family contact amongst family members. There is of course scope for "abuse" of this arrangement by family members hence the recent crackdown on this as per the WT article above.
If you are not DF'ed or have formally DA'ed yourself then the situation is much more grey. There are some circumstances by which you can be considered having DA'ed yourself by your actions (taking blood, joining another religion or partaking in religious ceremonies/holidays, joining the army etc.) but if you have simply drifted away and not attended for a long time then you are not DF'ed or DA'ed.
What does happen, however, is individual witnesses can then determine that they are going to shun you anyway and consider you as a DF'ed person. For example, if you were inactive for years and then started living with someone then self righteous witnesses who knew that may shun you out of their own volition. One family I know very well treated one of their sons as if they were disfellowshipped when he left the org and got a girlfriend in the world. He never lived with her but their open statement to all their kids were that if you leave the truth then that's how you will be treated. He was baptised but never DF'ed as he simply wanted out. He has, in the past 18 months, come back to the org. He had a JC but was never DF'ed, just put on restrictions.
The reality is that being DF'ed, DA'ed or inactive are legalistic, procedural terms that in the most part have absolutely no scriptual backup. Elements of shunning do have some scriptual basis but the extent and context is clearly being overused by the WTS. I've tried arguing this in the past and have sucessfully used some aspects of the org's own rules against them to thwart bullying elders but overall it makes little difference. If someone wants to treat you badly whilst maintaining a self-righteous stance then they will, regardless of what the procedures, let alone Christ like love, suggest. As a currently active JW in good standing I have had to fight tooth and nail in the past to prevent injustices from my own BoE - as an inactive one displaying attitudes contary to those accepted by the org then you have little chance of winning.
The point that has been made to me on this board several times now, however, is how much should you care....? it's their rules and if you are out then you have no obligation to accept them.
