Now you can easily Erase your Phone After your Death or simply pass on the data to your loved ones. Part of increased online presence means that settings are available to do as you choose and think suitable with your accounts once you are no longer active.
On your android phone, Google has a built-in mechanism for dealing with Inactive Account Settings. But setting this up could be tricky and if done in the wrong way might cause you to lose data. So read on to get a full hang of details before you start digging your android settings.
Erase your Phone After your Death
Inactive Account Settings is not turned on for every Google account. You have to set it up manually, otherwise, Google will keep your account open and accessible indefinitely, or close it at its discretion.
- Your primary Google email address
- A secondary email address, for backup
- Your phone number for SMS warnings that the IAS system is about to go into effect
- The email address of anyone you intend to share data with after the IAS system activates
When you add a new person, you’ll see a pop-up. This allows you to share as few or as many Google services as you care to with your contact. Just sharing “Google Account” (which includes Gmail) will give them access to alot of information. Chrome will show your web browsing history. Google Maps will give them your trip and location data, YouTube will show them your video watch history, etc.
Googles Data Erase Policy
This new policy was introduced on June 2021, and by June 1, 2023 (which means after two years) Google will be deleting your data from Drive, Docs, Sheets, Slides, Jamboard, Gmail, Photos, Drawings, Forms and Sites if the accounts have been inactive.
Google also said that if you don’t want to get your data deleted. Then the users can continue using the service with the associated account via the Google app or the browser to keep it active. By default, this is three months, but it can be extended to as much as eighteen (1.5 years). Google will send you alerts before the process is started.
You can also tell Google to alert up to ten people that your account is going into inactive mode. You can also choose to share some of your data with those people — access to your Gmail account, for example, to give them 2FA access to other information.
This is a good idea if you’re in the process of, say, setting up a will or a power of attorney. Three months later, Google can completely delete your account, if you have that setting enabled.