Inactive Account Manager

https://www.google.com/settings/account/inactive

by adamrmcd • 12 years ago

62 18 12 years ago

adamrmcd• 12 years ago

I have no idea when this was announced, if at all. I just came across this "Inactivity Account Manager" and thought of it as a "Dead man's switch" solution.

Under the "Add Trusted Contact" section, you can write a personal "atonement" email to whoever will receive your data. At least that's how the message to my wife is turning out :|

cypherpunks01• 12 years ago

It came out a little more than a year ago. Pretty quiet launch, but they blogged about it:

http://googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.com/2013/04/plan-your-dig...

I think Wired and some other folks picked it up then too.

jws• 12 years ago

You are trying to access Inactive Account Manager from a Google Apps Account. Inactive Account Manager is only available for Google Accounts.

Google UI at its finest.

iancarroll• 12 years ago

Anyone know if this is possible within the Google Apps console? Or is it locked out from us.

sergiotapia• 12 years ago

Try having 4 emails from clients that insist you use their domain email (hosted on GApps) and switching to them or your personal email to check out your google analytics.

It's a total and absolute -sham-. I still don't understand how they can screw up such basic functionality. Hell, even YouTube has -basic things- completely wrong. For example, I leave a comment on a video. I want to see my comment three months down the line and see if I have any replies and what score it has. I can't find that - anywhere. Where can I easily find my comments? Christ.

madeofpalk• 12 years ago

To be fair, handling multiple accounts I would imagine is pretty hard. And then coordinating that across all of Googles suite of servies would only add to the complexity.

I'm not aware of any other provider or site that lets you be logged in with two accounts at once.

thrownaway2424• 12 years ago

https://www.youtube.com/inbox#comments/

saurik• 12 years ago

The goal of Google Apps is to allow a domain administrator to own your account. I am having a difficult time coming up with a use case where you want an employee to be able to grant their account upon it becoming "inactive" to someone else: if the employee dies or leaves for some long period, the domain administrator should simply reclaim the account (and the domain administrator's password should itself not be something you are reliant on a feature like this to grant access to: it should be information known to the company, similar to bank account details).

(Or is the complaint just that the distinction between "Google Apps Account" and "Google Account" isn't sufficiently clear? If so, I agree: they should have drastically different branding to make the difference more understandable. As it stands, I know people who seem to be trying to use Google Apps accounts as their personal account, which leads to situations where changing your e-mail hosting provider effectively means you lose access to your Google services and data. Even worse are employees/students who store personal data to their managed accounts :(.)

ableal• 12 years ago

"I don't know where I am."

"You're in a hot air balloon hovering approximately 30 feet above the ground."

https://www2.bc.edu/~radinr/Management_Humor/jokes.htm

RexM• 12 years ago

Does this include chrome's history?

jayzalowitz• 12 years ago

No, its awesome and deletes your browser history when you die.

tlrobinson• 12 years ago

Relevant: http://www.snotr.com/video/3806/Porn_Buddies

jmathai• 12 years ago

34 words; Inactive Account Manager is used 4 times.

Representing 35% of the message.

rb9999• 12 years ago

HN title: 4 words (including appended domain). Inactive Account Manager is used 1 time.

Representing 75% of the message.

The more you write, the lower that percentage that should drop to. 35% of 34 words is fair.

SeanKilleen• 12 years ago

Sorry I didn't see this earlier. A fantastic tool, even if it's filling me with existential dread having to write these messages to my loved ones.

A really elegant solution to the "Dead man switch". I'm glad Google thought to do this. It may be a small thing, but it did really matter to me.

planckscnst• 12 years ago

Wow, that was a surreal, emotionally moving experience. I recommend everyone to go through it even if you don't want to enable it.

ferongr• 12 years ago

The first time I navigated to that page (by accident, I was exploring my Google account settings) I sat there looking at the screen puzzled. It took me almost 5 minutes to realize that this nebulous description actually meant the passing of the account owner.

Couldn't they label it more clearly?

Inactive Account Manager

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