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Re:Show HN: DeadManHandle by nathan_f77 on Saturday May 11, 2019 @04:58AM (#19885295)
I should mention that this is a native feature in Gmail / Google.

I get a "Google Inactive Account Manager reminder" email about once a year to see if I want to update my settings. They will notify me 4 months after my last activity. After 6 months, they will set up a auto-response in Gmail, and send an email to some trusted contacts (wife, parents.) I've also chosen to give them access to all of my data in my Google account (including email.)

The nice thing about Google's version is that they already know if you're active (reading emails, searching, etc.) So it's frictionless, apart from the annual reminder to check your settings.

You can set up your inactivity settings here: https://myaccount.google.com/inactive

I think that sending an email every 2 weeks is far too frequent, and it's a really bad idea to send an emergency email after only 3 days. I think 4 months and 6 months is a far more reasonable timeframe.

Re:Show HN: DeadManHandle by nathan_f77 on Saturday May 11, 2019 @10:16AM (#19886279)
Sorry, I just checked my inbox and realized that I've been getting the "inactive account reminder" emails once every three months.

It's interesting that I couldn't really tell the difference between once a year and once a quarter, unless I really paid attention to them.

Re:Show HN: DeadManHandle by nsb1 on Saturday May 11, 2019 @09:58AM (#19886188)
Not to sound overly pessimistic, but I no longer trust Google to keep features beyond a couple years, let alone for time on the order of a lifespan. I honestly believe that deadmanhandle is more likely to be around longer than this gmail feature.
Re:Show HN: DeadManHandle by nathan_f77 on Saturday May 11, 2019 @10:10AM (#19886251)
Google released the Inactive Account Manager in 2013 [1], and it looks like I signed up in 2014. They do discontinue a lot of products [2], but I can't think of any reason for why they would remove this feature. So I would be willing to take that bet!

[1] https://www.cnet.com/how-to/how-to-set-up-googles-inactive-a...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Google_products#Discon...