Years ago when an individual died (assuming they had a will in place) it was simple to determine the destination of their possessions; however, in today’s hi-tech age, so much of our lives are kept hundreds of miles away, buried deep within a server in a random data center. It’s been a question that has plagued a variety of companies over the years – what happens to a user’s digital life when they die? While some sites have set procedures in place for this situation, many have not. Recently Google announced a new feature named “Inactive Account Manager” which allows a user to set in place their wishes of what they want done with their account should the unfortunate happen.
Google product Manager Andreas Tuerk wrote about the new feature in a Google Public Policy Blog post. The feature allows a user to select what Google will do with their “Gmail messages and data from several other Google services if [the] account becomes inactive for any reason.” There are different intervals of inactivity which can be selected based off of a user’s preference – three, six, nine or twelve months. The options currently include having all of your data deleted or contacts can be selected to receive some of the data. Currently Google’s Inactive account Manager can be configured for each user’s +1s; Blogger; Contacts and Circles; Drive; Gmail; Google+ Profiles, Pages and Streams; Picasa Web Albums; Google Voice and YouTube.
In order to help prevent action from being taken by mistake, there are configuration settings to warn users before the process begins. Google will warn a user first by “sending a text message to your cellphone and email to the secondary address…provided.”
Personally, I’m glad to see Google finally has in place options for users for when they die. I think there are lots of people who want to know that their data will be removed and conversely I think there are many users who want their loved ones to get an inside-look at what they were like in such a personal setting such as email. It’s nice that Google has considered both sides of the coin when launching this much needed feature – but with that said; I haven’t brought myself to configure my Inactive options yet, have you?
