The Digital Afterlife and i-Death

Leave it to Google to help you auto-euthanize and die digitally. The presence of our online selves after death was of limited concern until recently. However, with the explosion of online media and social networks our digital tracks remain preserved and scattered across drives and backups in distributed, anonymous data centers. Physical death does not change this.

[A case in point: your friendly editor at theDiagonal was recently asked to befriend a colleague via LinkedIn. All well and good, except that the colleague had passed-away two years earlier.]

So, armed with Google’s new Inactive Account Manager, death — at least online — may be just a couple of clicks away. By corollary it would be a small leap indeed to imagine an enterprising company charging an annual fee to a dearly-departed member to maintain a digital afterlife ad infinitum.

From the Independent:

The search engine giant Google has announced a new feature designed to allow users to decide what happens to their data after they die.

The feature, which applies to the Google-run email system Gmail as well as Google Plus, YouTube, Picasa and other tools, represents an attempt by the company to be the first to deal with the sensitive issue of data after death.

In a post on the company’s Public Policy Blog Andreas Tuerk, Product Manager, writes: “We hope that this new feature will enable you to plan your digital afterlife – in a way that protects your privacy and security – and make life easier for your loved ones after you’re gone.”

Google says that the new account management tool will allow users to opt to have their data deleted after three, six, nine or 12 months of inactivity. Alternatively users can arrange for certain contacts to be sent data from some or all of their services.

The California-based company did however stress that individuals listed to receive data in the event of ‘inactivity’ would be warned by text or email before the information was sent.

Social Networking site Facebook already has a function that allows friends and family to “memorialize” an account once its owner has died.

Read the entire article following the jump.