Google’s rolled out an “Inactive Account Manager”
– a dead-man’s switch for your Google accounts. If you set it, Google
will watch your account for protracted inactivity. After a set period,
you can tell it to either squawk (“Email Amnesty International and tell
them I’m in jail,” or “Email my kids and tell them I’m dead and give
them instructions for probating my estate”) and/or delete all your
accounts. This has a lot of use-cases, from preventing your
secrets from being tortured out of you (before you go to a protest, you
could set your dead-man’s switch to a couple hours – if you end up in
jail and out of contact, all your stuff would be deleted before you were
even processed by the local law) to easing the transition of your
digital “estate.”
Google adds a “dead-man’s switch” — uses cases from torture-resistance to digital wills [2013]
Published
Escapes from Apathy 