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Allowing you to write a heartfelt message to someone you love, or enabling you to send important passwords, your banks accounts, some secrets… via email after your death could replace notarial escrow in a way.
Setting-up automatic emailing after death, as death can sometimes be quite unpredictable, could be a great help.
The objective is clearly to anticipate an accident or a death…
Schedule and send a (free) email after your death
The free Inactive Account Manager service of Google is a way for users to share parts of their account data or notify someone if they’ve been inactive for a certain period of time.
It is quite simple, if you are not connected to Google for x months, Google proposes to automatically send an email to the people of your choice (10 maximum), to share with them some of your data, and to attach a personalized message.
Setup your email before death
Just go to the options of his Google account: Google Settings > Personal info and privacy > Inactive account manager
Define the waiting period
Define the inactivity period after which one your list of contacts will be receiving automatic emails:
- 3 months
- 6 months
- 12 months
- 18 months
Confirm your own contact
Google will contact you multiple times to the following contacts prior sending your scheduled email.
- phone number
- mail email
- recover email
If no answer from you, then the mail will be sent…
Add the contacts to be notified
It is possible to add up to 10 relatives who will be notified.
You can also add their phone number to verify their identity. Google will call or send a text message to make sure it’s them before they can download your data.
Choose the information to share
For each contact you will decide
- which information you want to share on your Google account access (ex calendar, email account, contacts, documents, etc…).
- the message you want them to receive (ex: letter, passwords, bank accounts, etc…).
Set-up an auto-reply (optional)
If you use Gmail, Google also offer you the possibility to set up an AutoReply that will be sent after your account becomes inactive. This will inform anyone who emails you that you are no longer using this account.
Send email after death
Inactivity confirmation
Google will start contacting you 1 month before time is up.
Google will send multiple confirmation requests to your main email, to your backup email, and to your phone number to verify wether your account is active or not.
Notification of your contacts
If you did not reply to at least one of the multiple requests, then Google will consider your Google Account is inactive, and they will notify the contacts you’ve added.
Your contact will have 3 months to download a copy of the data that you selected from your Google Account.
This service if free.
Deletion of you account
After this 3-month time period, even if you didn’t add any contacts to be notified, Google will delete your account and its activity and data.