Google has launched a new tool that lets users plan what will happen to their private data after they die.
Announced on Google’s blog by Product Manager Andreas Tuerk on Thursday, the tool is called Inactive Account Manager.
(You have to love the humility: “Not a great name, we know,” Tuerk writes. The Googlers could have had a field day with the name, but discretion, obviously, won the day. One commenter’s suggested name: “My Will.” Better, and still classy!)
The Inactive Account Manager is located on the Google Account settings page, under the “Account Management” choice in the “Account” tab.
I had to hunt around to find it: you have to click on the option that says “Control what happens to your account when you stop using Google. Learn more and go to setup.”
There, you can tell Google what to do with your Gmail messages and data from other Google services if your account becomes inactive for any reason.
One choice is to have your data deleted after periods of three, six, nine or 12 months of inactivity.
Another option is to pass on data from some or all of these services to your designated beneficiaries:
- +1s
- Blogger
- Contacts and Circles
- Drive
- Gmail
- Google+ Profiles
- Pages and Streams
- Picasa Web Albums
- Google Voice
- YouTube
Before Google pulls the plug on your data, it will first warn you by sending a text message to your cellphone and email to the secondary address you’ve provided.
Says Tuerk:
We hope that this new feature will enable you to plan your digital afterlife - in a way that protects your privacy and security - and make life easier for your loved ones after you’re gone.
Now you can die in peace, with your beneficiaries safely assured of receiving the contents of your Google Drive and Picasa albums… Then again, you can choose to make it all go poof like a pile of ashes blown onto a virtual ocean or buried with a virtual fruit tree.
This is a good move, and we can only hope that other holders of our online assets follow suit.
After all, just think of all the online portals outside of the Google universe through which your assets flow:
- Buyer/seller accounts on eBay, Amazon, PayPal, Yahoo! Stores, etc.
- Credits in stores such as iTunes or PartyPoker.com
- Photos on Flickr, Photobucket, Snapfish, Kodak Gallery
- Business invoices and intellectual property shared through services such as Dropbox, ShareFile, Syncplicity, Huddle et al.
- Online bank accounts
- Email accounts
Surely none of us wants any of that personal, valuable material to be plundered or to have its privacy compromised when we’re no longer around.
Don’t wait around for every keeper of your in-the-cloud valuables to come up with a plan for deleting your data, though.
To avoid having data fall into the wrong hands, or not getting to your heirs, draw up a digital will along with your regular will.
Leave instructions for how to get to your digital assets and what you want your heirs to do with them.
Don’t wind up in digital limbo.
Follow @LisaVaas
Follow @NakedSecurity
Image of Tombstone courtesy of Shutterstock.
Implying that I'm going to die.
This is something every pc user needs to think about and I never had before! Thank you, NakedSecurity and Ms. Vaas,
for bringing it to our attention!
I will leave it all to my cats.
I'm using Google Apps and apparently this isn't available for me. Guess that means I can't afford to die.
How utterly bizarre!! I really don't give two hoots what happens to my e stuff when I am offed. Its the same insane thinking we can take what we have with us when we die. I believe we spend so much energy, time, effort and care into building up a vast amount of 'Stuff' that we truly believe we can 'get' the benefits of these in the afterlife. Rather like the ancient Pharaohs. Some cultures even burned their living wife on their funeral pyre. If we do believe we would come back in a afterlife, as a frog, cat, dog or perhaps another human form. Would I be really concerned about all those unanswered emails and online photos(however compromising! ) ?
I do think its is necessary to leave the best legacy behind for your loved ones. But to worry about emails/photos etc… is insanity.
Love to hear more what others think.
My policy has been to find someone I can trust (my brother in my case) who has a list of my websites and my passwords. I trust him to get rid of what needs to be gotten rid of and to be able to pull things from my email that need to get pulled.
This feature is Great, but there is one problem.. you need a mobile phone number.
I know most people have one. But I don't have one, don't want one (and probably never will have one).
What will happen to people like me? We can't decide what we do with our data because we don't have a mobile?
hmm….you COULD get a google voice/skype/some other such "throwaway" number that is used for such events, but beyond that just sits there not being used. (This way you have the number for when needing it, but still not pay for something you don't use.)
Adding to what Gabriel said, my wife has a mobile phone but has text messages blocked, which prevents me from enabling this desirable feature.
I sent feedback to Google to be able to use either email or land line but was told not to expect an answer.
As I wrote my comment yesterday, I also wrote a feedback to google (saying basically the same thing as my previous comment). This morning, when I check my email, it says that my Inactive Account Manager was enabled (without mobile).
I'm happy it worked for me.. but it obviously shouldn't work like this.
Absolutely unthinkable years ago that you should be doing stuff like this! For the ones who say 'I don't give two hoots about where my data goes when I die' – don't forget that others are likely to be implicated in your photos, emails, videos and other revealing data snippets. This may well include your close family… Be careful…
This post makes a lot of sense. Never really thought about some of the stuff, but I can totally see how it would be beneficial to planning the private google data.