Digital life after death by google
All of us are always concerned about our things while we are alive and what will happen to them after our death. Similarly, users across the world have also shown some anxiety about what happens to their data, website, emails after their demise. In simple terms, people may want to protect their digital life after they die.
Keeping this thing in mind Google has launched a new service to ensure people about what will occur to their online pictures, blog spots, email accounts, websites after their death.
Google’s system will first send a warning text message to a mobile registered with the account, and a message to a backup email account nominated by the main account owner. If the user then checks in, the account is deemed active again and no action is taken. If any account remains in operated for 3, 6, 9 or 12 months then it will come under “Inactive Account Manager” and then either the data will be deleted or send all/ selected elements to the concerned nominated persons chosen by the user. The trusted nominee would be able to collect all the pages where you clicked the “+1″ buttons, any blog posts and comments from the Blogger service, files in your Google Drive, your Gmail email, Google+ Profiles, YouTube viewing, your Google contacts and the members of your Google+ Circles, Picasa photo albums and Google Voice phone data.
Google claims that this new feature will facilitate you to plan your digital afterlife – in other sense it protects your privacy and security and create easier life for those who have been no more between us.
The concern about the topic increased when the family people came across the problem who tried to access and shut down accounts of the family member who passed away on sites like Facebook and gone through the controversy on the proposal “right to be forgotten” let down by European Union who tried to introduce that for digital information. In other case the family of one soldier was refused the access of his email by Yahoo, and families have to get court orders to achieve access to the Facebook accounts of the deceased person. These are some of the examples which garb attention towards this growing problem. Hence the new service offered by google to control the aftermath of a “digital death” by other nominated person or family persons to access all the information about their dead friend or relative on their sudden death will prove a key to the problem.
Google’s new service joins a number of offerings to handle the aftermath of a “digital death”, typified by services such as Entrustet, which let people decide what messages and access to information they want surviving relatives or friends to see after their death.
A spokesperson for Facebook said that the company already offers “memorializing ” services where an account can be kept open but will not be used for advertising. “Immediate family members can have an account removed completely – but they may be required to provide proof of their familial status in addition to proof of death,”
But the company is insistent that it will not simply give access to accounts to relatives of the deceased. “We are only able to consider requests for account contents of a deceased person from an authorised representative. The application to obtain account content is a lengthy process and will require you to obtain a court order,” it says in its guidance.
Google’s system will only work if the user has an account set up with them. Else, family members who wish to get access to email, video or other Google accounts will still have to provide a court order, due to data protection laws.