What happens to your Google account after you die?

• Lie wrote on 2013-04-13 02:25

  Quote from The Atlantic:

  Perhaps you, like me, have had the pleasure of finding some old family letters or calendars squirreled away in a box somewhere, and sitting there for hours, reading about the daily life of your family before you existed.
  
  But for future generations, those quotidian texts won't exist in a physical form but in digital files -- emails, electronic calendars, even maybe some grocery or party-lists filed away in Google Drive. The question isn't so much whether we are creating these records but whether anyone in the future will have access to them, locked away behind our passwords (and perhaps our 2-step notification process too).
  
  For years now, lawyers, scholars, and even the government have been urging us to prepare for this eventuality. Write a social-media will, they plead, some sort of spelled-out plan for how your online life should be handled post-mortem.
  
  And while doing so is definitely a good idea, there are also some complications: If you leave your social-media information as part of a will, it becomes public information, and you might want to keep the stuff your password private, even after your death. Additionally, people have many passwords and change them frequently; it's a pain to keep a social-media will current.
  
  Google has now rolled out a technological solution, a euphemistically titled "Inactive Account Manager" tool ("Control what happens to your account when you stop using Google," the company says, i.e. die). With the tool, you set an amount of time you want Google to wait before taking action (3, 6, 9 months, or a year). One month before that deadline, if Google hasn't heard from you, it will send you an alert by either email or text message. If that month closes out and you still have not re-entered your account, Google will notify your "trusted contacts" -- you can list up to 10 -- and share your data with them if you have so chosen. The email they would get would look something like this:
  
  

  [Image: http://cdn.theatlantic.com/static/mt/assets/science/Screen%20Shot%202013-04-11%20at%206.13.27%20PM.jpg]

  
  
  Alternatively, you can set up the manager to outright delete your account without sharing it at that time. This includes all data associated with the account -- Blogger posts, uploaded YouTube videos, Picasa albums, Google Voice messages, etc. (This goes without saying, but the tool will only help with your Google accounts. If you've got, say, a Facebook account, you'll still haven't to plan for that separately.)
  
  It's always seemed to be the case that the difficulty of planning for one's "digital afterlife" isn't so much the logistics of it but the psychological effort it requires to deal with one's own mortality in a utilitarian, businesslike way. Perhaps the greater service Google has provided here isn't so much the functionality of the tool -- that it will execute your plans without you once you're gone -- but that they've made making those plans simple, requiring few decisions on your part. So now you can fill out that quick form, and redirect your mortal anxiety away from your email account, and back toward your mortality itself. Cheers.

  
  
  Source: http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/04/google-death-a-tool-to-take-care-of-your-gmail-when-youre-gone/274934/
• Lewd wrote on 2013-04-13 03:07
  Creepy
• Timotei wrote on 2013-04-13 03:31
  No, my porn must live!
• Kitkat wrote on 2013-04-13 19:01
  I'd rather my internet life die with me. :blush:
• Hanna wrote on 2013-04-16 21:00
  and if I die before I wake
  I pray for my hard drive to break
• Ashikoki wrote on 2013-04-16 23:30

  Quote from Kitkat;1067791:

  I'd rather my internet life die with me. :blush:

  
  
  Same here. As if I'd let anyone get access to my internet accounts, dead or alive.
• Sumpfkraut wrote on 2013-04-17 12:49
  All my sensitive stuff is stored in a certain container only accessible with a certain file on a certain disk anyway. I wouldn't care either way, my privacy and good name are of no concern from my death on.
• Cannibal wrote on 2013-04-17 12:52

  Quote from Ashikoki;1069248:

  Same here. As if I'd let anyone get access to my internet accounts, dead or alive.

  
  Dear god, this. Who would seriously sign up for something like this? Boring people who never watch porn or do other "things" on the internet? Wtf?
• xXAlexa33Xx wrote on 2013-04-19 07:43
  "Dear god, this. Who would seriously sign up for something like this? Boring people who never watch porn or do other "things" on the internet? Wtf?"
  "Same here. As if I'd let anyone get access to my internet accounts, dead or alive."
  "and if I die before I wake I pray for my hard drive to break"
  "I'd rather my internet life die with me. "
  
  All of you guys pretty much summed up what I was gonna say.
  Why the hell would I want my friends and family going through my private 'stuff' after I died? Like seriously, who the hell signs up for this? Are there really people out there that are completely boring and have done NOTHING that they wouldn't want someone to look at?
  
  I'm pretty much imagining something like this.
  
  [SPOILER="Spoiler"] Welcome, NORMAL GUY WITH NOTHING TO HIDE.
  
  GMAIL:
  Grandma Re: Cute Cat Videos #27!
  Jim Re: Re: Thanks for helping set up the bike, Jim!
  Stacy Re: You were a real help with the kids last night!
  CuteCatTeam Re: Your daily dosage of cute cats!! Me-OW!
  Mick Re: You wanna get together and go ice skating with some orphans this weekend?
  
  NOTES:
  Remember to upload that video of Sparky playing with her chew toy to YouTube!
  Watch Snow White and the Seven Dwarves
  Make some lasagna for the friendly neighbors
  Meet up with pen pal
  Go fishing
  
  INTERNET HISTORY:
  Google search - How to tie a real knot
  How to tie a real knot - Howtodoanything.com
  Google search - How to tie a real knot does this work with red strings too
  Sand Castles on the beach
  Google search - How to build a super cool sand castle
  Facebook.com
  Facebook.com - Support Sally the dog with one leg!
  Facebook.com - Donate to Sally!
  Facebook.com - Billing information
  Google search - How to help dogs in need
  Google search - Youtube
  Youtube.com
  Youtube.com - search - Ferrets learning cute tricks
  Youtube.com - video - Aw ferrets!!
  Google search - Great pogo-sticks for a great price
  BuyAPogoStick.com
  Google search - Free cute smiley faces for my keyboard that my friends will love
  
  PICTURES:
  Cute cat image #1.bmp
  Cute cat image #2.bmp
  Cute cat image #3.bmp
  Cute cat image #4.bmp
  Grandma goes skiing.jpg
  Huey bakes a cake.jpg
  
  HIDDEN FOLDER IN SYSTEM32:
  Plans for cousin's birthday party.txt
  Where I hid the Easter eggs.txt
  
  ....Why the hell did I take the time to type all of that.
  
  [/SPOILER]
• Lyrveil wrote on 2013-04-19 07:51

  Quote from Cannibal;1069536:

  Dear god, this. Who would seriously sign up for something like this? Boring people who never watch porn or do other "things" on the internet? Wtf?

  
  
  How would any porn be transmitted to anyone you have allowed to get your info anyway? I'm pretty sure google doesn't have a porn service [S](yet)[/S] and who keep trace of their porn in their email anyway?
  
  I for one think it's a good idea-ish. There's some people who would never know if I died and would probably worry about it if they didnt saw me for a good 3+ months just like that. That could at least give them peace of mind. I didn't check the google thing yet but I'm assuming you can choose who gets to see what, and if I'm right you could probably set it just so they see something like "Hey there, your friend gave you access to this. [S]In reality it means they passed away[/S]".
  
  What I want to say is that while I understand not all your private info need to be shared, it's a good way to let someone know you died. Though I guess the ideal would be that it'd only send an email to the people you want saying that you passed away without giving any info.
• xXAlexa33Xx wrote on 2013-04-19 07:55
  For me, if I'm on my phone and find something nice, I send it to myself via email so I can look at it on my computer.
• Lyrveil wrote on 2013-04-19 08:01
  Fair enough. I actually edited my post after I posted it with another alternative I'd be better with. Honestly while I don't find it odd that some people would use google's current service, all I really want it to do would be to inform the people I cared about so they would stop worrying about me (assuming they were worrying haha).
• Lie wrote on 2013-04-22 05:41
  You all know you can also set it to delete your Google account and everything in it instead, when it hasn't heard from you, right?