It’s kind of weird to be thinking about your death, but it’s important to at least make a digital afterlife plan especially for the people you will leave behind. To make that easy for you now, Google wants to step in to at least help you plan your digital afterlife. Google has launched 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.
You can find the new feature called Inactive Account Manager — on your Google Account settings page. You can now tell Google what to do with your Gmail messages and data from several other Google services if your account becomes inactive for any reason.
How to set up Google Inactive Account Manager
At the settings page
Choose a timeout period—three, six, nine, or twelve months of inactivity—and from there you can direct Google on what to do with your Gmail messages, Blogger posts, Contacts, Google+ account, Google Voice, and YouTube accounts. (Basically, any Google services you’ve used in the past.) After that time period of inactivity, Google will send out a text message and e-mail the secondary address you provide. If you don’t respond in a timeout period, it will assume the worst.
According to Google, “you can choose to have your data deleted — after three, six, nine or 12 months of inactivity. Or you can select trusted contacts to receive data from some or all of the following services: +1s; Blogger; Contacts and Circles; Drive; Gmail; Google+ Profiles, Pages and Streams; Picasa Web Albums; Google Voice and YouTube. Before our systems take any action, we’ll first warn you by sending a text message to your cellphone and email to the secondary address you’ve provided.“
