However expected these policies are, they're always a massive pain in the ass for people who continue to maintain accounts for the dead, and that use case never

However expected these policies are, they're always a massive pain in the ass for people who continue to maintain accounts for the dead, and that use case never seems to be considered, except maybe to push those maintainers to just delete everything. For example, one Gmail account I maintain for my deceased partner has another older Gmail account delegated to it. I have the credentials for the newer account, but not the older account. That delegated access is the only way I can get at about 10 years of their life; since I can't login to the account, I can't run a Google Takeout on it, I can't pull it via IMAP, etc. (I'm sure it turned some heads when I logged back into their Twitter account, which became their de facto public online memorial after death, to prevent Twitter from deleting it as inactive.) All of my efforts to recover actual capital-A Google Account access to the delegated account have been either declined or ignored by Google because I'm not the account owner — which, obviously, because I'm not dead. I've offered them death certificates and small-estate proof, but they don't want it or seem to care. Since I can't login to the account, I can't prove activity on it, so this means one day in December that'll just be it. 10 years of correspondence, wedding planning, travel plans, memories straight down the shitter. (Google already "lost" all of the photos in that account that were more than 10 years old; cf. other complaints: https://www.reddit.com/r/GMail/comments/jgr0j9/help_missing_attachments_in_old_emails/ https://www.reddit.com/r/GMail/comments/jgr0j9/help_missing_....) If you want content from a dead person's account, you have to get a court order, and then only if Google accepts your request, which they probably won't: https://support.google.com/accounts/troubleshooter/6357590?hl=en#ts=6357650 https://support.google.com/accounts/troubleshooter/6357590?h... Judging from the contents I think it consumes about 150MB of storage. I'd pay quite a lot to get that account dumped onto a $10 thumb drive so I can back it up. I'd already printed out a binder full of it, which is comical considering it's fucking _email_. Anyway — figure out your digital estates while you're awake and alive because it gets way harder — for everyone, much less you — once you're incapacitated or dead.