Google today was being nice, minding about its users when they are gone, as in dead, helping it’s users set up an inactive account manager for their digital afterlife.
According to a post this morning by Andreas Tuerk, Product Manager at Google, “Not many of us like thinking about death — especially our own. But making plans for what happens after you’re gone is really important for the people you leave behind. So today, we’re launching a new feature that makes it easy to tell Google what you want done with your digital assets when you die or can no longer use your account.”
The new feature dubbed Inactive Account Manager is on the Google Account settings page and let’s a user tell Google what to do with a users’s Gmail messages and data from Google’s several services in case the account becomes inactive.
Options include having the data deleted — after three, six, nine or 12 months of inactivity. Or one can select trusted contacts to receive data from some or all the following services: +1s; Blogger; Contacts and Circles; Drive; Gmail; Google+ Profiles, Pages and Streams; Picasa Web Albums; Google Voice and YouTube.
Not wanting to kill users who are traditionally inactive may be due to dependency on other email accounts, Google first send a warning text message to a user’s cellphone and email the secondary address one provided on sign up.
Though it sounds sad, getting ready for a digital afterlife, the service protects one’s data ensures them privacy and security and makes life easier for their loved ones or next of kin.
