Google Death: Leave Your Google Data to Your Loved Ones

There was a story a while back about Bruce Willis suing Apple over the inability to leave all of the digital iTunes content he’s purchased over the years to his children after he dies. If I remember right, the story turned out to be bogus, but it brings to mind an interesting issue: what happens to your digital data when you die?

This issue hasn’t gone unnoticed, with experts in several fields pushing for a solution. Google now offers one. They’re calling it “Inactive Account Manager,” but a quick search on their own search engine will reveal “Google Death” as the name preferred by the Internet.

With this new tool, you can schedule Google to share the entirety of your Google data – Gmail, YouTube, Blogger, etc – with up to ten people after your account has been inactive for so long and you haven’t responded to their alerts. You can set the deadline at three, six, nine, or twelve months. A month before the deadline is up, Google will send you an alert and prompt you to re-enter your account. If you don’t comply (presumably because you’re dead), Google will proceed with the data sharing.

Of course, this is optional, and you can choose to have your account deleted. This may be the safer option lest you fall into a coma and wake up a year later to all of your closest friends and family knowing all of your secrets.

via The Atlantic