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How to set your Google account to delete itself after you die
- symplee 7y agoWhere's the option for if Google goes under? Does the highest bidder get all-access? Will a corporate re-structure void any existing check-box preferences? Will "deleted" information be reincarnated?
- llukas 7y agoGDPR protected users do not need to worry about those questions that much.
- asdfasgasdgasdg 7y agoConsidering Google's data retention policies are GDPR compliant, things will be really deleted within a small N number of days from when they're "deleted." At least for European users, and I doubt they are maintaining separate policies on this front for other users. Even in the extremely unlikely event Google was grossly out of compliance, the successor company would still need to obey the law or risk hefty fines, so it shouldn't really matter to you.
- ajdlinux 7y agoAs much as I hate to think about this - what's the probability that Google outlives the GDPR, current trends in privacy laws, or the European Union itself?
- grey-area 7y agolow
- didibus 7y agoI've definitely seen companies having different policies. First, the data is valuable, so keeping it when you are allowed too can be worth it for that. Second, doing a full deletion can be costly in hardware resource utilization, and sometimes even involve some manual labor. So minimizing it can be cost effective.
- groestl 7y agoLegitimate interests are a potential backdoor to keep/sell customer data in the event of bankruptcy or ownership transfer. Provided legitimate interest can be argued, this would still be GDPR compliant. Given the potential value of the data, it's extremely unlikely that noone would try that in court, and before a final decision is made (which could take years), nothing would be deleted.
- groestl 7y agoTo the downvoters: note that I don't argue that it's actually a legitimate interest with respect to the GDPR, only that a third party looking to acquire (parts of) Google is likely to find it worthwile pursuing the chance that it is. This setup will lead to data being retained for longer than a couple of days.
- BillinghamJ 7y agoGDPR doesn't require "real" deletion. You just have to make the data inaccessible
- dvfjsdhgfv 7y agoCitation needed.
- Xylakant 7y agoI don’t have a citation handy, but solutions such as “encrypt hthhe data and instead of deleting the data trash the key” have at least been discussed for environments where actually deleting data is hard (event-based storage, cold long-term backups) etc. From a technological perspective that data would be as good as deleted, even if strictly speaking it still exists.
- xorcist 7y agoOverwriting the data with random data is deleting it.
- Xylakant 7y agoThere’s no data being overwritten in the mechanism I described.
- tempestn 7y agoI believe his point is that in encrypting the data, you are overwriting it - with the encrypted version, which without the key is effectively 'random data'. It's not actually random though, so I don't agree that the data has technically been deleted. Do agree with you that it might as well have been though, so certainly should be good enough.
- Xylakant 7y agoThe idea is slightly different though: you encrypt the individuals data before it ever goes to permanent storage, backup or so. And when it’s time to delete that data, you discard the key instead, effectively making that data inaccessible.
- jjeaff 7y agoI see absolutely no reason they would keep the same policy for regions that don't require it.
- icebraining 7y agoIn fact, we're seeing that now with Facebook: every user outside the US/Canada was technically a user of Facebook Ireland, and when the GDPR came into effect, they all got GDPR rights (EU companies have to comply with the GDPR for all users, not just EU users). Facebook's response was to move everyone except EU users off Facebook Ireland ASAP.
- deadbunny 7y agoBecause maintaining maintaining multiple codebases is inefficient.
- JensRex 7y agoBecause making money off your data is their whole business model, they're very motivated to lose as little of it as possible.
- mgkimsal 7y agothey have dozens/hundreds of systems in different languages run by different teams. nothing was gdpr compliant 2 years ago. there's been a cost to move to that compliance. changing systems you don't have to is also inefficient. you'd need to weigh the delta between the inefficiencies, assuming that 'efficiency' was the primary goal in the first place.
- jjeaff 7y agoDeleting data would not a separate codebase. It would literally be a few different functions that only get called if the country is in the EU. Do you think they run a separate codebase for google.co.uk and google.fr ?
- fenwick67 7y agoBankruptcy is a hell of a thing. Radioshack sold off consumer information when they went bankrupt, even though that was against what customers agreed to. It wouldn't be a surprise of Google was able to do the same. https://www.pcworld.com/article/2901028/radioshack-puts-customers-personal-data-up-for-sale-in-bankruptcy-auction.html https://www.pcworld.com/article/2901028/radioshack-puts-cust...
- Causality1 7y agoSecure destruction of customer data in the event of bankruptcy is one of the many things we need in a digital rights package.
- ekianjo 7y agoCustomer data is actually an asset so it is worth money. Would be destroying value if it worked this way.
- icebraining 7y agoSo what?
- Someone 7y agoSo, Foo stores your backups, but goes bankrupt. Bar takes over the remaining business, deletes your backups first, and then sends you a new contract? It’s not that they have the data, it’s that they split it from the associated contract. Bankruptcy has little to do with this. It could also happen when Foo stayed in business, or when Bar took over or merged with Foo, without it going bankrupt in-between. The only difference is that, with bankruptcy, there may be a third party that’s guilty of splitting the data from its contract. If Foo is bankrupt, it doesn’t exist anymore, and Bar may buy the data separate from its contract in good faith.
- mgkimsal 7y agoi may not want my data destroyed. and why bankruptcy? why not just change of status? company is sold, or goes public, or goes private, or just changes from llc to c corp, or CEO changes? there's far more things that can happen to a company besides bankruptcy which would cause me to want my relationship and data with the company to terminate.
- sbov 7y ago> Will "deleted" information be reincarnated? A few months back someone working for Google was posting about how their whole job is ensuring deleted data actually gets removed from their systems. It isn't instant but from what they said it seems to work itself through their systems in a relatively timely fashion.
- duxup 7y agoYeah I think that user was responding to a question I had. One of their points was Google has specific written policies about what deleting means and a team(s) whose job it is to do it and make sure it happens.
- m463 7y agoI don't see google going under in our lifetime. That said, this is a common "exit strategy". I think just about every privacy policy (even "good" ones) has a clause that lets the data be transferred elsewhere.
- dkuebric 7y agoCurious how digitally-aware the standard will is at this point. Seems pretty significant given the massive paper trail, even if not directly monetary.
- kkarakk 7y ago> how digitally-aware the standard will is at this point Wipe my hard drive and delete my browser history if i die is a pretty common cultural joke so i'm guessing if you're under 40 you'll have a clause for it
- deadbunny 7y agoYup, it's not exactly hard to have a list of important accounts and how to access them.
- acgh213 7y agoThis has been around for years and is nothing related to Google's new automatic removal of certain location data. This article is informative, but it is nothing new.
- leowoo91 7y agoI'd go for at least 2 years of auto removal, in case for a coma.
- azdacha 7y agoI'd note that under GDPR, we'd be "free" to do anything we want with data belonging to dead people. (source : I recall that from memory from reading the GDPR document, there are some website that will source the same intel) HOWEVER, France and Germany Data Protections law, individuals can give to data controllers general or specific indications about the retention, erasure, and communication of their personal data after their decease. https://www.gamingtechlaw.com/2018/09/iconsumer-deceased-persons-gdpr-data-protection.html https://www.gamingtechlaw.com/2018/09/iconsumer-deceased-per...
- azdacha 7y agoI bet there are some subtleties in other countries as well !
- chme 7y agoIf the email accounts gets deleted, can somebody else create a new one with the same address and receive all emails from the deleted account and possible take over all other accounts? Then I would rather just leave the account open after I died.
- Quenty 7y agoNope. Gmail explicitly disallows reuse of emails. Of course this is google specific.
- icebraining 7y agoYes; Yahoo and Microsoft are known to reuse inactive addresses. And just leaving the account open won't help, you have to login periodically: https://www.pcworld.com/article/2052586/microsoft-is-quietly-recycling-outlook-email-accounts.html https://www.pcworld.com/article/2052586/microsoft-is-quietly...
- coldtea 7y ago>can somebody else create a new one with the same address and receive all emails from the deleted account and possible take over all other accounts Why would you care? You'd be dead...
- mgkimsal 7y agoyou may have access to services/accounts that affect other family members.
- aflag 7y agoThat's not a very nice way to do it. It only takes a busy month outside of "the grid" to become inactive. I'd rather have the option to trust a handful of users which have all report that I'm dead before taking any actions. People having a bit of trouble after I die is way better than I having to deal with an inactivated account while living.
- acgh213 7y agoThe mention of "It only takes a busy month outside of 'the grid' to become inactive" isn't entirely true. The setup allows you to decide not only the length of time from 1 month to 18 months, at intervals. What data you share can be spread across contacts which you select by email and verify by phone. There isn't a default to send all data to an address, you have to select it. The individual selection of data that can be filtered has also grown since my first usage in 2014. As for "I'd rather have the option to trust a handful of users which have all report that I'm dead before taking any actions" is a fair point regarding that Facebook requires a death certificate. Though, this is not the same as the Inactivity manager, which is what Google is offering. The purpose is to be a way to allow people to access content on your accounts after a period of time. It allows a set number of contacts to access your account in a provisioned way, through a very refined selection set that even breaks down separate google play stores (books, music, play, and movies.) I also saw selections for Mail, Photos, and 42 other different data points that can be sent to separate users. It is a preemptive step by the account owner to verify their information will be easily retrieved by a family member or friend. I would suggest taking a look at the Inactivity manager. It has a more robust set of features than most inactivity systems, and doesn't just apply to death. Even in death, it allows a family to collect photos, contact lists, and other mementos of a persons life.
- hakka-nyu-su 7y agoGoing "off the grid" (from your perspective) can look to others like "disappeared, and possibly dead". The photo sharing part could be useful for them to grieve, and you probably wouldn't enable this feature if you didn't consider them. On the other hand, being kidnapped for ransom or being kidnapped by the state (i.e., arrested) is a far more serious false positive, I would think, because deleting your digital data would probably make recovering a whole lot harder.
- tommoor 7y agoI set up this deadman switch a while back to give access to my parents, rather than delete. Writing the email that would get sent to them in this event was… very difficult.
- oarsinsync 7y agoI did this too, to a friend rather than my parents, as my parents are less technologically literate, and aren't likely to outlive me or my Google account. Fortunately, because it's a friend, the message is largely just memes about death to provide some levity to the situation. It isn't something either of us expects to happen any time soon, so it's easier to be glib about it, and not overthink it.
- diminish 7y agoI think death is becoming increasingly costly for human civilization - as all the processes and big data becomes discontinued due to a trivial natural reason, just because DNA-based organic life on planet earth evolved so. Rejuvenation and abolition of death seems to be the only way for cloud providers to have a sane future. YC request for startups: Life 2.0
- SmellyGeekBoy 7y agoYou jest but many SV startups are working on this "problem" already. An eternity with the likes of Bezos and Zuckerberg awaits...
- EliRivers 7y agoAbolishing death seems costly. Given that identity, as defined by all the data associated with a person, is unaffected by this "death" that the fleshbags who hold these identities seem to insist upon experiencing, perhaps we can instead simply migrate the identity to a different fleshbag; the identity lives on. The processes and data go on, and we don't have to spend a lot abolishing death. New people can simply be assigned an existing identity and all the history that goes with it. We'd be foolish to do this without some thought; for example, we can put on hold identities that are of limited use.
- sofayam 7y agoGood feature but the three month window they grant is way too short. Winding up someone’s affairs after they have died often takes longer. A year would make more sense.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- icebraining 7y agoAssuming Takeout still works on these suspended accounts, it seems reasonable: just get a full account backup before the three months are up.
- edoo 7y agoTechnically you have 3 months to click the 'download all account data' button and it is from the moment of the inactivity trigger, which would reasonably be many months itself.
- noncoml 7y agoDo yourself a favor and delete it before to die.
- tamrix 7y agoGoogle even wants to know the date of your death! I'm not giving even more data to Google!
- robjan 7y agoDepending on where you live this could be public information anyway. Often your death must be Gazetted before your will can be executed.
- billsmithaustin 7y agoCall me cynical but this just sounds like a hook for their new service, Google Séance.
- johnnycab 7y agoI chuckled at first, but it doesn't seem so far-fetched. This is a story of a startup founder backed by y-combinator, who posthumously provided inspiration for a memorial bot[1] WhatsApp (Android) stores it's backup on Google Drive by default; by using this data, it is more than possible to create a bot and resurrect someone in the digital domain. [1] https://www.theverge.com/a/luka-artificial-intelligence-memorial-roman-mazurenko-bot https://www.theverge.com/a/luka-artificial-intelligence-memo...
- kowdermeister 7y agoI preferred to share it with a few trusted people so they can change my online profiles to something "permanent" when the inevitable comes. I also share a preferred playlist for the goodbye ceremony :) Probably will keep adding perks there. It's very sad when you see an update for example on LinkedIn saying "congratulate X for his one year anniversary". No, he's not working anymore, he's dead.
- nilleo 7y agoIt's a crappy situation, but if you do ever see a LinkedIn update like that for a deceased member, they're actually pretty quick at getting the profile taken down when you contact them about it. Source: did this for a deceased member in my network shortly after getting an update like that. A human responded and took action the same day after I reached out. https://www.linkedin.com/help/linkedin/answer/2842/deceased-linkedin-member-removing-profile?lang=en https://www.linkedin.com/help/linkedin/answer/2842/deceased-...
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- fouc 7y agoPersonally I'd just take it as a chance to remember that person instead of making it even easier to forget about them.
- wyldfire 7y agoI guess I'm just being cynical but LinkedIn's [real] customers are being served by the swiftness of response -- the deceased persons cannot respond to their solicitations for job applicants.
- lighttower 7y agoI still call the voicemail of my deceased family member from time to time to hear their voice. Can't delete them from my contact list
- 7y ago
- Simon_says 7y agoWhy wait?
- peterwwillis 7y agoWe have a weird relationship with death in the West. Rather than remember the dead, we delete them?