Google’s New Inactive Account Manager Lets You Manage Your Digital Afterlife

Death sucks but it’s inevitable. Google now has a way to plan your digital afterlife.

The feature is called Inactive Account Manager and you’ll find it on your Google Account settings page. You can tell them what to do with your Gmail messages and data from several other Google services if your account becomes inactive for any reason.





For example, 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 the systems take any action, they’ll first warn you by sending a text message to your cellphone and email to the secondary address you’ve provided.