Google Helps You to Plan Your Digital Afterlife

Our digital life has become more and more important to us that we wouldn’t be able to live without it anymore. Photographs of friends and loved ones, email correspondences, and school and work documents are all part of many people’s digital footprints today. But what happens with your digital legacy once you’re not around anymore?

Google now has incorporated what they call the ‘Inactive Account Manager’ into its services. What will it do for you, you ask? Well, after a user-defined timeout period which starts from your last login, your Google account will be marked as inactive. Ofcourse, Google will first make sure your account is actually inactive by sending you a confirmation email and text message. If Google receives no response from you, contacts of your choosing can be notified after the timeout period that you are no longer using your account. There’s even an option to share data with those contacts at this time. Any of the following can be shared: +1s, Blogger, Contacts and Circles, Drive, Gmail, Google+ Profiles, Pages and Streams, Picasa Web Albums, Google Voice and YouTube. A warning text and email will be sent before any data sharing occurs. The final step is deletion of your account after 3-12 months, which is completely optional. Google will erase your account and its contents if you so desire.

Activating the Account Manager can be done here.

What do you think about Google offering you the possibility of managing your digital afterlife? Will you sign up? Let us know in the comments below!