8 ms·

Google launches tool to determine data use after death

65 points by drucken 14y ago

modernerd 14y ago
Does deleting a Google account also remove non-public data that you haven't openly shared, such as search records and Android-related GPS data?
- pll23 14y ago
  I hope not. What a trove. Imagine if we had every household conversation from the ancient Mesopotamians or even Roman times. Nobody from that time would give a flying hoot that we know what they said and did. The big area for abuse is now, during the person's life. afterwards why not seal it for a thousand years and then pass it all on unfiltered for the future historians and population to do whatever they want with. send it to the moon!
- crymer11 14y ago
  Another commenter's reply (which has been marked dead) brought up a great point about the value of this information for people in the future. I want and expect privacy now and for the near future, but when my (future) grandchildren's grandchildren are gone (hell, not even that far from now), that information being aired publicly won't hurt me and could reasonably provide the future some benefit.
pgsandstrom 14y ago
In a few decades, the majority of accounts on facebook or g+ would belong to dead people, if they were not cleaned up. A strange thought.
- wslh 14y ago
  It would be nice to leave bots playing on those Zynga games ;-)
- Void_ 14y ago
  Makes me wonder if there will be Facebook or Google in a few decades. I imagine in a few years, when some of the big companies will bankrupt, people will realize they want control over their internet lives. Their data will probably stay in the cloud, but I hope they will be in open format, and maybe people will keep a copy in an implant or something like that. Fun to think about what will be in a few decades. It's unimaginable.
  - BHSPitMonkey 14y ago
    There are already people who want control over their online lives today. What makes you think that slice of the population will grow significantly? I don't predict the percentage of "technical" people (or rather, people with strong feelings about the issues behind the technologies they use) to ever really change. Most people are simply and unchangeably uninterested in DRM or locked bootloaders or data mining or closed source or how much technical privacy they have.
trumbitta2 14y ago
I set up mine a second ago. I think it's an "ok" solution to a problem we heard of quite a couple of times in the recent past. I also hope this will open the way for more complete solutions, maybe also backed by international regulations.
- bergie 14y ago
  Yep. One such issue to solve would be "ownership" of digital assets. I don't really have anything that important on Google, but I'd like to have for example my code on GitHub and my photos on Flickr to live on after I kick the bucket.
millerc 14y ago
GMail, 2004: "keep giving people more space forever", in stark contrast to Hotmail and all other providers who delete your data after a few months of inactivity. GMail, 2013: "You can tell us what to do with your Gmail messages and data from several other Google services if your account becomes inactive for any reason", and only offers to safeguard your data for a year: "after three, six, nine or 12 months of inactivity". Sprinkled with some fear of digital privacy after your death, for good measure. So as of today, the only difference between the old Hotmail policy and the new GMail, is whether that checkbox is ticked or not. I'm willing to bet that feature will shortly by enabled by default.
- rryan 14y ago
  Or Google is just trying to solve a real problem (that few people think about until it's too late) for its users. GMail is miniscule compared to YouTube. You really think Google is having so much trouble storing a bunch of text that they came up with this whole death justification to start deleting inactive accounts? Please.
  - millerc 14y ago
    In principle you'd be right, although Google/Youtube have never(?) made any promise about data retention. I've started to notice a number of older inactive links (say 5-10 years) have become stale, so I'd suspect they started to clean-up their database on that side.
- ender7 14y ago
  Really? Really? Has Hacker News become this childish? I'm sorry, but this is getting a little out of hand. I know people are still upset about Reader's cancellation but come on. If we're at the point where everyone just shits all over whatever Google does, regardless of whether it's a good thing or not, then that really doesn't say much about us as a community. If Google does bad things, let's point that out, but if, on the other hand, they come out with a product that is clearly of benefit to users, respects their wishes, and offers a feature that no other service providers do, then perhaps we should recognize that Google might have done something good for once.
marban 14y ago
Not available for Apps Accounts.
- bergie 14y ago
  Kind of makes sense, given that Apps accounts are usually business, not personal. In which case the companies probably already have a policy on what to do with the accounts when a person leaves. And they have admins that can manage the accounts, unlike with the personal ones
  - ben1040 14y ago
    Maybe more so going forward now that the free option is gone, but there are still a lot of us who are using grandfathered free Google Apps accounts so we can have custom domains.
kintamanimatt 14y ago
I get the impression that Google determines death based on a certain period of inactivity. What if the account holder didn't die but, for example, went to jail and ended up with their account deleted or had "data from some or all of their services" sent to people while they were still alive but AFK? The failsafe of texting a number and emailing a backup address doesn't seem sufficient.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- goldfeld 14y ago
  If they have selected for their data to be sent to someone in their close trust, how is this a problem? The trustee will know they are not actually dead, and may in fact need to intercede, e.g. with the mail trying to reach the unavailable person. Now for data to be simply erased there's no easy solution, but it's not an option I would ever pick. I mean, at any point in time there may be people depending on me through email, sometimes in remote locations, who would have little way of knowing if anything happened to me. The least I can do is to have a setup that would have someone notify them if I died. I once bought a product from an eBay seller, and upon inquiring on the lateness to ship it, was notified by his brother that he had passed away a few days ago. It happens.
jayjay1010 14y ago
Hacking Google for position 1 results: There’s an interesting hack being in Google.co.uk results for the term 'electronic cigarette' where a black hat approach has worked to fool Google into allowing a bunch of sites to dominate the results. It's quite an interesting blackhat approach combining techniques and relying on a few oddities at Google for it to work. 1) So every few weeks Google cycles take place with filters and 'new sites' will have penalties applied (sandbox), allowing new sites to gain a bunch of links quickly then rank very fast between these cycles 2) The sites are cloaking their results serving up different results a) for Google bots, b) for people coming directly from Google, c) for anyone going directly to their site. They are doing this because they have affiliate links which they wish to hide from Google, while the traffic coming directly from Google will see affiliate links, c) anyone going to them directly is treated suspicious so they show them a blank page saying the site is closed. "This website is no longer available.": http://fabelectroniccigarette.co.uk/ http://fabelectroniccigarette.co.uk/ If you go there from a Google search you will see affiliate links https://www.google.com/search?q=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fabelectroniccigarette.co.uk https://www.google.com/search?q=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fabelectron... The cache page shows Google Bot without the affiliate links http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:IhEEuWPbYpoJ:www.fabelectroniccigarette.co.uk/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&client=firefox-a http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:IhEEuWP... If you look at the cookies for the site you will see the refer link being captured wptt_referrer The back links to the site are all black hat links: http://www.black-x.de/gaestebuch.php http://www.black-x.de/gaestebuch.php They are running a churn and burn system with a bunch of sites www.fabelectroniccigarette.co.uk www.electroniccigarettegold.co.uk/ www.ecigaretteco.co.uk www.superb-ecigarette.co.uk/ www.smoking-electronic-cigarette.co.uk/ www.electroniccigarettehealth.co.uk/ www.wickedelectroniccigarette.co.uk/ www.ecigswow.co.uk/ www.awsomeecigarettes.co.uk Interesting
- ok_craig 14y ago
  I don't understand how this is relevant to the article.
  - mkr-hn 14y ago
    Some kind of bizarro spammer.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
mrgriscom 14y ago
I've lately been thinking about what would happen to all my digital data if I died unexpectedly, so I find this post quite timely. However, I wanted a scheme that did not rely on any single provider. Instead, I split up my master password using secret sharing and distributed the shares to trusted parties. A quorum of them could recover the password and thus my data -- not just gmail, but all my online accounts. I wrote up the details here: http://mrgris.com/blog/2013-03-27-survivorship-in-the-digital-age/ http://mrgris.com/blog/2013-03-27-survivorship-in-the-digita...
- freehunter 14y ago
  That's an interesting solution, but it really only works if you never change your password. Which isn't a great practice...
xedarius 14y ago
I quite like this idea and it brings us closer to the concept of a digitally fingerprinted will. Which I'd much prefer to the one that is stored in my solicitors filing cabinet, somewhere.

65 points by drucken 14y ago

Does deleting a Google account also remove non-public data that you haven't openly shared, such as search records and Android-related GPS data?

pll23 14y ago
I hope not. What a trove. Imagine if we had every household conversation from the ancient Mesopotamians or even Roman times. Nobody from that time would give a flying hoot that we know what they said and did. The big area for abuse is now, during the person's life. afterwards why not seal it for a thousand years and then pass it all on unfiltered for the future historians and population to do whatever they want with. send it to the moon!
crymer11 14y ago
Another commenter's reply (which has been marked dead) brought up a great point about the value of this information for people in the future. I want and expect privacy now and for the near future, but when my (future) grandchildren's grandchildren are gone (hell, not even that far from now), that information being aired publicly won't hurt me and could reasonably provide the future some benefit.

pgsandstrom 14y ago

In a few decades, the majority of accounts on facebook or g+ would belong to dead people, if they were not cleaned up. A strange thought.

wslh 14y ago
It would be nice to leave bots playing on those Zynga games ;-)
Void_ 14y ago
Makes me wonder if there will be Facebook or Google in a few decades. I imagine in a few years, when some of the big companies will bankrupt, people will realize they want control over their internet lives. Their data will probably stay in the cloud, but I hope they will be in open format, and maybe people will keep a copy in an implant or something like that. Fun to think about what will be in a few decades. It's unimaginable.
- BHSPitMonkey 14y ago
  There are already people who want control over their online lives today. What makes you think that slice of the population will grow significantly? I don't predict the percentage of "technical" people (or rather, people with strong feelings about the issues behind the technologies they use) to ever really change. Most people are simply and unchangeably uninterested in DRM or locked bootloaders or data mining or closed source or how much technical privacy they have.

trumbitta2 14y ago

I set up mine a second ago. I think it's an "ok" solution to a problem we heard of quite a couple of times in the recent past. I also hope this will open the way for more complete solutions, maybe also backed by international regulations.

bergie 14y ago
Yep. One such issue to solve would be "ownership" of digital assets. I don't really have anything that important on Google, but I'd like to have for example my code on GitHub and my photos on Flickr to live on after I kick the bucket.

millerc 14y ago

GMail, 2004: "keep giving people more space forever", in stark contrast to Hotmail and all other providers who delete your data after a few months of inactivity. GMail, 2013: "You can tell us what to do with your Gmail messages and data from several other Google services if your account becomes inactive for any reason", and only offers to safeguard your data for a year: "after three, six, nine or 12 months of inactivity". Sprinkled with some fear of digital privacy after your death, for good measure. So as of today, the only difference between the old Hotmail policy and the new GMail, is whether that checkbox is ticked or not. I'm willing to bet that feature will shortly by enabled by default.

rryan 14y ago
Or Google is just trying to solve a real problem (that few people think about until it's too late) for its users. GMail is miniscule compared to YouTube. You really think Google is having so much trouble storing a bunch of text that they came up with this whole death justification to start deleting inactive accounts? Please.
- millerc 14y ago
  In principle you'd be right, although Google/Youtube have never(?) made any promise about data retention. I've started to notice a number of older inactive links (say 5-10 years) have become stale, so I'd suspect they started to clean-up their database on that side.
ender7 14y ago
Really? Really? Has Hacker News become this childish? I'm sorry, but this is getting a little out of hand. I know people are still upset about Reader's cancellation but come on. If we're at the point where everyone just shits all over whatever Google does, regardless of whether it's a good thing or not, then that really doesn't say much about us as a community. If Google does bad things, let's point that out, but if, on the other hand, they come out with a product that is clearly of benefit to users, respects their wishes, and offers a feature that no other service providers do, then perhaps we should recognize that Google might have done something good for once.

marban 14y ago

Not available for Apps Accounts.

bergie 14y ago
Kind of makes sense, given that Apps accounts are usually business, not personal. In which case the companies probably already have a policy on what to do with the accounts when a person leaves. And they have admins that can manage the accounts, unlike with the personal ones
- ben1040 14y ago
  Maybe more so going forward now that the free option is gone, but there are still a lot of us who are using grandfathered free Google Apps accounts so we can have custom domains.

kintamanimatt 14y ago

I get the impression that Google determines death based on a certain period of inactivity. What if the account holder didn't die but, for example, went to jail and ended up with their account deleted or had "data from some or all of their services" sent to people while they were still alive but AFK? The failsafe of texting a number and emailing a backup address doesn't seem sufficient.

deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
goldfeld 14y ago
If they have selected for their data to be sent to someone in their close trust, how is this a problem? The trustee will know they are not actually dead, and may in fact need to intercede, e.g. with the mail trying to reach the unavailable person. Now for data to be simply erased there's no easy solution, but it's not an option I would ever pick. I mean, at any point in time there may be people depending on me through email, sometimes in remote locations, who would have little way of knowing if anything happened to me. The least I can do is to have a setup that would have someone notify them if I died. I once bought a product from an eBay seller, and upon inquiring on the lateness to ship it, was notified by his brother that he had passed away a few days ago. It happens.

jayjay1010 14y ago

Hacking Google for position 1 results: There’s an interesting hack being in Google.co.uk results for the term 'electronic cigarette' where a black hat approach has worked to fool Google into allowing a bunch of sites to dominate the results. It's quite an interesting blackhat approach combining techniques and relying on a few oddities at Google for it to work. 1) So every few weeks Google cycles take place with filters and 'new sites' will have penalties applied (sandbox), allowing new sites to gain a bunch of links quickly then rank very fast between these cycles 2) The sites are cloaking their results serving up different results a) for Google bots, b) for people coming directly from Google, c) for anyone going directly to their site. They are doing this because they have affiliate links which they wish to hide from Google, while the traffic coming directly from Google will see affiliate links, c) anyone going to them directly is treated suspicious so they show them a blank page saying the site is closed. "This website is no longer available.": http://fabelectroniccigarette.co.uk/ http://fabelectroniccigarette.co.uk/ If you go there from a Google search you will see affiliate links https://www.google.com/search?q=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fabelectroniccigarette.co.uk https://www.google.com/search?q=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fabelectron... The cache page shows Google Bot without the affiliate links http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:IhEEuWPbYpoJ:www.fabelectroniccigarette.co.uk/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&client=firefox-a http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:IhEEuWP... If you look at the cookies for the site you will see the refer link being captured wptt_referrer The back links to the site are all black hat links: http://www.black-x.de/gaestebuch.php http://www.black-x.de/gaestebuch.php They are running a churn and burn system with a bunch of sites www.fabelectroniccigarette.co.uk www.electroniccigarettegold.co.uk/ www.ecigaretteco.co.uk www.superb-ecigarette.co.uk/ www.smoking-electronic-cigarette.co.uk/ www.electroniccigarettehealth.co.uk/ www.wickedelectroniccigarette.co.uk/ www.ecigswow.co.uk/ www.awsomeecigarettes.co.uk Interesting

ok_craig 14y ago
I don't understand how this is relevant to the article.
- mkr-hn 14y ago
  Some kind of bizarro spammer.

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

mrgriscom 14y ago

I've lately been thinking about what would happen to all my digital data if I died unexpectedly, so I find this post quite timely. However, I wanted a scheme that did not rely on any single provider. Instead, I split up my master password using secret sharing and distributed the shares to trusted parties. A quorum of them could recover the password and thus my data -- not just gmail, but all my online accounts. I wrote up the details here: http://mrgris.com/blog/2013-03-27-survivorship-in-the-digital-age/ http://mrgris.com/blog/2013-03-27-survivorship-in-the-digita...

freehunter 14y ago
That's an interesting solution, but it really only works if you never change your password. Which isn't a great practice...

xedarius 14y ago

I quite like this idea and it brings us closer to the concept of a digitally fingerprinted will. Which I'd much prefer to the one that is stored in my solicitors filing cabinet, somewhere.