Designing your digital legacy

April 29, 2013

We lead rich virtual lives on social networking sites like Google+, Facebook, and Twitter. So what happens when real life catches up, and our flesh-and-blood bodies succumb to mortality? For our virtual selves, at least, some concrete answers are available—ways to settle our digital affairs after death, while minimizing hassle and heartache for loved ones. Google sets the standard by building a dead man’s switch (one with a gentler name) into your Google account features. Facebook and Twitter also have processes in place for handling accounts of the recently deceased, though they’re somewhat more cumbersome. A few good Web services can help for all other online cases, passing along login information based on triggers you can set yourself. Google’s dead man switch Google’s new Inactive Account Manager system is simple to understand and set up. Accessible from your Google account settings page, it helps you set up a time-out period for your account—the length of time you can go without logging in before Google assumes that you’re never coming back. The default is three months, but you can dial it up in increments of 90 days until it tops out at a year and a half. I recommend setting it to at least six months, though you could vary this period based on how often you log in. Google makes preparing for your death quick and painless. A fail-safe is built into the service: One month before the timeout period, Google will send you an e-mail reminder (and an optional SMS message, if you give them a phone number) to make sure you're not coming back. Once your account is inactive long enough to trigger the Inactive Account Manager, Google will send a message to up to ten people notifying them that your account is now inactive. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Link: http://www.pcworld.com/article/2036372/designing-your-digital-legacy.html#tk.rss_howto