I also share a preferred playlist for the goodbye ceremony :) Probably will keep adding perks there.

It's very sad when you see an update for example on LinkedIn saying "congratulate X for his one year anniversary". No, he's not working anymore, he's dead.

https://www.linkedin.com/help/linkedin/answer/2842/deceased-...

Does the highest bidder get all-access? Will a corporate re-structure void any existing check-box preferences? Will "deleted" information be reincarnated?

Radioshack sold off consumer information when they went bankrupt, even though that was against what customers agreed to. It wouldn't be a surprise of Google was able to do the same.

https://www.pcworld.com/article/2901028/radioshack-puts-cust...

(I had a shower re-sealed by a company that gave a 5-year guarantee. Four years later it was leaking again, and I got in touch with them to have it redone under warranty. After stonewalling me for weeks, they finally came back with "we purchased this company off its original owner but didn't take on any of their obligations so you have to find the original owner and get them to repair your shower", and as far as I could tell that's actually a thing you can do.)

This is exactly the same thing, except it was the company name that was sold. Acme Corporation sold the Acme brand to RoadRunner Inc, then quietly ceased trading taking all their liabilities with them.

That would be like buying a company that owes money on a building and telling the bank that you won't be making payments because you are keeping the building, but not the debt.

That's why a big part of mergers and acquisitions is researching all the possible liabilities that may exist for the company to be acquired.

I'm cool with limiting liability, but completely shielding individuals illegal activity is inane in my opinion.

Bar takes over the remaining business, deletes your backups first, and then sends you a new contract?

It’s not that they have the data, it’s that they split it from the associated contract.

Bankruptcy has little to do with this. It could also happen when Foo stayed in business, or when Bar took over or merged with Foo, without it going bankrupt in-between.

The only difference is that, with bankruptcy, there may be a third party that’s guilty of splitting the data from its contract. If Foo is bankrupt, it doesn’t exist anymore, and Bar may buy the data separate from its contract in good faith.

and why bankruptcy? why not just change of status? company is sold, or goes public, or goes private, or just changes from llc to c corp, or CEO changes? there's far more things that can happen to a company besides bankruptcy which would cause me to want my relationship and data with the company to terminate.

A few months back someone working for Google was posting about how their whole job is ensuring deleted data actually gets removed from their systems. It isn't instant but from what they said it seems to work itself through their systems in a relatively timely fashion.

One of their points was Google has specific written policies about what deleting means and a team(s) whose job it is to do it and make sure it happens.

Even in the extremely unlikely event Google was grossly out of compliance, the successor company would still need to obey the law or risk hefty fines, so it shouldn't really matter to you.

Do you think they run a separate codebase for google.co.uk and google.fr ?

Facebook's response was to move everyone except EU users off Facebook Ireland ASAP.

I think that covers what we’re talking about here. As in, it is ok to just delete the link between a real person to an anonymous key and not all their anonymised data. That allows one to avoid having to delete all the data itself (imagine how hard that would be from historical backups etc).

“The real danger is the gradual erosion of individual liberties through automation, integration, and interconnection of many small, separate record-keeping systems, each of which alone may seem innocuous, even benevolent, and wholly justifiable.”

From a technological perspective that data would be as good as deleted, even if strictly speaking it still exists.

Which links to:

https://ico.org.uk/media/for-organisations/documents/1475/de...

The data has to be "put beyond use"

That said, this is a common "exit strategy". I think just about every privacy policy (even "good" ones) has a clause that lets the data be transferred elsewhere.

Of course this is google specific.

Why would you care? You'd be dead...

Imagine what sort of damage you could do if you had access, even for a day, to Tim Cook's email? Some other CEO of a Fortune 100 company? A celebrity?

I'm surprised this isn't used more often as an attack vector.

Your comment shouldn't be downvoted because other people need to see and realize that a person's privacy should extend beyond just one's last breath.

I had to dispute a charge to my wife's credit card after she passed... it felt like the credit card company was fighting tooth and nail to make me pay for a charge that I hadn't made.

If you have adult children/family, make sure they do the same.

Fortunately, because it's a friend, the message is largely just memes about death to provide some levity to the situation.

It isn't something either of us expects to happen any time soon, so it's easier to be glib about it, and not overthink it.

Wipe my hard drive and delete my browser history if i die is a pretty common cultural joke so i'm guessing if you're under 40 you'll have a clause for it

As for "I'd rather have the option to trust a handful of users which have all report that I'm dead before taking any actions" is a fair point regarding that Facebook requires a death certificate. Though, this is not the same as the Inactivity manager, which is what Google is offering. The purpose is to be a way to allow people to access content on your accounts after a period of time. It allows a set number of contacts to access your account in a provisioned way, through a very refined selection set that even breaks down separate google play stores (books, music, play, and movies.) I also saw selections for Mail, Photos, and 42 other different data points that can be sent to separate users.

It is a preemptive step by the account owner to verify their information will be easily retrieved by a family member or friend.

I would suggest taking a look at the Inactivity manager. It has a more robust set of features than most inactivity systems, and doesn't just apply to death. Even in death, it allows a family to collect photos, contact lists, and other mementos of a persons life.

On the other hand, being kidnapped for ransom or being kidnapped by the state (i.e., arrested) is a far more serious false positive, I would think, because deleting your digital data would probably make recovering a whole lot harder.

YC request for startups: Life 2.0

Given that identity, as defined by all the data associated with a person, is unaffected by this "death" that the fleshbags who hold these identities seem to insist upon experiencing, perhaps we can instead simply migrate the identity to a different fleshbag; the identity lives on.

The processes and data go on, and we don't have to spend a lot abolishing death. New people can simply be assigned an existing identity and all the history that goes with it. We'd be foolish to do this without some thought; for example, we can put on hold identities that are of limited use.

This article is informative, but it is nothing new.

WhatsApp (Android) stores it's backup on Google Drive by default; by using this data, it is more than possible to create a bot and resurrect someone in the digital domain.

[1] https://www.theverge.com/a/luka-artificial-intelligence-memo...

(source : I recall that from memory from reading the GDPR document, there are some website that will source the same intel)

HOWEVER, France and Germany Data Protections law, individuals can give to data controllers general or specific indications about the retention, erasure, and communication of their personal data after their decease.

https://www.gamingtechlaw.com/2018/09/iconsumer-deceased-per...