As more and more of our lives revolve around the digital world and social media, what happens to a person’s online presence once they die is becoming an increasing concern. Google has now decided to address this issue with a new feature called ‘Inactivity Account Manager‘, which is made to help users manage their digital afterlives.
The feature allows for you to set up what happens to your account after not signing in for an extended period of time. You can choose a time period of three months, six months, nine months or a year of inactivity before Google takes action with your account. After the selected period of time, you can set Google to delete all information and profiles associated with your account or you can have Google notify a list of trusted contacts with all the data associated with your Google services.
The services that Google will share your data about are:
+1s
Blogger
Contacts
Drive
Google+ Circles
Google+ Stream
Mail
Pages
Picasa Web Albums
Profile
Reader
Voice
YouTube
Google will also send you a text message a month before your account expires to make sure that you are in fact buried underground and that you are not just taking an extensive leave of absence from the Internet.
If you are concerned about what will happen to your cat dedicated YouTube Channel when you die, be sure to check out Inactivity Account Manager (a name so bad that even Google makes fun of it on its blog) here.
Image Credit: Mashable