Google Inactive Account Manager

The recent passing of my mother has gotten me thinking a lot about what happens with Google accounts after someone dies. For those that are unaware, Google has a great feature that users can setup in advance called Inactive Account Manager.
Its vitally important that users set this up so those that care about them can take care of your account with as little distress as possible in a very difficult time.


Setting this up is very easy. Just navigate to  https://www.google.com/settings/account/inactive and click on the setup button and follow the simple steps.  Users have will have the option to set the Timeout period (the amount of time of inactivity before the Inactive Account Manager goes into effect. Based on these settings, notifications will go out to those you identify 1 month BEFORE this period of time is reached. 

Next you can setup trusted contacts (up to 10) to be notified and what type of access they have. You will be prompted to enter their email address and whether or not you want them to have access to your data. If you do grant access to your data, you are then prompted to specify what data in your Google Account they will have access to. These trusted contacts will also need to have a phone number where they can receive verification codes in order to access your data. After you have this selected - you are then provided with a screen to enter an email message to your trusted contact. Think really hard about what you want to write here because, remember, you are essentially speaking to your contact from the dead. 


Next you have the option to set an auto-response in your Gmail account. This will go out to anyone that contacts you after your account goes inactive.

The final option you have is to have Google delete your entire account automatically once the actions above have been carried out. 

The setup takes about 5 minutes, but will save your friends and family a great deal of headaches and prevents any risk of your account getting hijacked for other use.

I hope you all set this up, but hope that yours will not be activated for many many years to come.