Deconstructing Google Inactive Account Manager

Announcer: Welcome to the Digital Planning Podcast, this series is designed to educate individuals about all things digital in connection with estate planning, business planning, and estate administration. To keep up with all things digital, please subscribe to iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play, or wherever you download your podcasts. And now, Jennifer Zegel, a partner at Kleibard LL, Ross Bruch, a principal of EstateGenie, and Justin Brown, a partner at Troutman Pepper Hamilton Sanders LLP, with today’s topic.

Host: Welcome back to the Digital Planning Podcast. We have a very important guest here with us today. Ayesha Minhaj, who is an Associate Security Counsel at Google. As many of our listeners know, Google is one of the most popular Search Engines and e-mail providers in the world. And it comes as no surprise, that dealing with what happens to the data and information in the user’s personal Google account at the user’s death or incapacity, is a frequent occurrence. However, many advisors, estates and trust practitioners, and even the public may be unaware of the Inactive Account Manager pre-planning tool available on the individual Google user’s account platform. And that is what we will be discussing today. Ayesha, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with us about this very important subject.

Ayesha Minhaj: Yeah, thank you so much for having me, I’m excited to talk to you guys about it.

Host: Excellent, so how did you come to work for Google?

Ayesha Minhaj: Urm, yeah. So, starting sort of from the beginning of my legal career, I went to Penn Law School in Philly. And then after that, my first role was as an Associate at Skadden, Arps, a large, big, law firm. I was doing a combination of sort of traditional litigation and white-collar internal investigations. And then after about 4 years there, I started looking for in-house roles that were in the Bay Area.. and Google was sort of the dream job and it ended up working out after some very lengthy interviews. And yeah, I ended up on a team called Law Enforcement Information Security Team where I primarily work on the civil legal process and Google’s response to third-party civil requests for data, the subpoenas, court orders, that sort of stuff. And as part of that sort of umbrella, interestingly, requests for deceased user data also falls into that workflow.

Host: How long have you been with Google?

Ayesha Minhaj: I have been here… It feels like a lifetime and also no time at all. I think it’s been about two and a half years now.

Host: Could you tell us a little bit about some of the business drivers or pain points that resulted in Google realizing they needed to address this consumer, data access information issue with a pre-planning tool?

Ayesha Minhaj: Sure. So, the creation of it itself predates me joining, but I think generally it was a part of a greater privacy effort and you know just recognizing that broadly Google’s services are just so engraved in people’s lives such as the variety of products and services that we offer and how useful they are and how much folks rely on them. And so, there’s, you know, very clear value in just enabling users to decide what happens to that information. And I think the main goal was to provide users the ability to just sensibly control what happens to their data in the event that they’re no longer using their account, including if they were to pass away. But it also contemplates other inactivity scenarios as well. You know, for example, not that you’re deceased but that you’ve just stopped using a particular e-mail, what do you want to happen to that data? So, I think the tool was just built with the goal of privacy and giving the user as much autonomy and control over their data as possible.

Host: Ayesha, how did Google come up with a design for the Inactive Account Manager tool? Because the tool is a very unique approach in how it addresses incapacity or death. But did they come up with the design?

Ayesha Minhaj: Yeah, so I’m not on the product engineering team that actually built the tool, so there’s probably various considerations that I’m missing. But the design itself, I think, is really a reflection of what the primary idea was behind it, which was to give users as much control and autonomy over their data as possible. So when you go through the tool and you’re setting it up, you’ll see that it’s really thoughtfully built. It’s a really clear, intuitive interface. It really clearly shows you all the products you can select from, and I think it was built very well to enable users to make the choices that they would like to with regard to their data. So, the workflow, if I quickly talk through it, is that the user just selects the time frame of inactivity that they would like to apply for their accounts. And the minimum is 3 months. And they can go through and select all the products that the Inactive Account Manager is integrated with. And they can select what they want to do with those products and services and who, if anyone, they would like to share those products and services with. And then they can select to either share their data or just alternatively delete their data. And once it’s shared, or once the inactivity clock has actually cut in, they can also elect to send a personal message to their recipient, kind of explaining what’s going on and why they chose this person to receive their data. So, every time I kind of look at the tool and l click through it again, I’m really impressed by just how intuitive it is and how thoughtfully it was built. 

Host: Can you help paint a picture for us of what this looks like within the Google atmosphere and environment? Is there a team devoted just to working on the Inactive Account Manager, is it part of another team’s mission, is there just one very overworked person approving and denying aspects of this tool or how does it work from an operation standpoint?.

Ayesha Minhaj:  Yeah, so as with many things that Google, there’s usually multiple state cultures involved. So here, the process now that the tools actually have been built, it’s fairly automated. So if the tool is set up properly, and there’s no issues, it’s automated to just work on its own. So your designated inactive Account manager contact gets a link once your period of time has passed, you can just download any data that you wish to share with them. And so, there’s not too many issues that arise, but there is obviously, you know, product teams that maintain the tool and occasionally other state culture teams including my team on the legal side that gets involved when there are certain nuances or issues that arise that require something outside of that sort of automation.

Host: So let’s say that I have my Google account and I have designated a recipient and it goes through the process of notifying my designated recipient. What happens if the designated recipient’s email bounces back, what does Google do at that point?

Ayesha Minhaj: Yeah, so that’s a great question. So the context that you input into the Inactive Account Manager. Last time I checked, they are not notified when you’re selecting them. They’re notified at the time the inactivity clock has run. And then they receive an email saying you know, so and so has elected you as their Inactive Account Manager and this is the data they wanted to share with you. So at the time of you setting it up, they don’t actually need to confront the email address that you provide. So there is the possibility that you either misentered an email address or one character off, or they changed their email and they no longer use it. So, it’s really on the user to make sure that they’re inputting the correct contact information first, verifying that they’ve entered it correctly, and also updating that information as it changes. So if you’ve put in your mom as the recipient and she no longer uses the email address that you input, it’s sort of on the user to go in and change those selections. So, I encourage folks to just make sure that they keep getting updated emails from the Inactive Account Manager reminding them that they have the service enabled. So that way, they can remember that they also need to change their contacts and update their contacts as needed. So to answer the question though is, if we were to have a bounceback essentially from the tool, we actually take back to the user selection. So if the user has inputted an email that is either no longer in service or it was input incorrectly, we don’t really take any further steps there. So that data is just not produced. The position is that we send the data to who the user liked us to, and that’s the information that the user provided to us, and so if it’s not an account that is working or being checked anymore, that’s unfortunately just sort of how it ends.

Host: So a fair take away from that would be, the burden is really on the user to ensure that the recipients that they’re inputting into the system have updated and accurate contact information.

Ayesha Minhaj: Yeah, a 100%. We really rely on the user, and sort of honor their elections. So whatever information they give us, that’s what we’re relying upon. And we wouldn’t really have any other methods to do otherwise. So we wouldn’t really be able to know, you know, this was the user’s mom’s email but it’s one character off from her real email, we just have no way of knowing or verifying that. So we rely on the user to make those selections.

Host: Of course. Do you have any advice for users on how to select a branch for the inactivity period? My understanding is that it could be 3, 6, 12, 18 months?

Ayesha Minhaj: Yeah, I think it’s really up to the user and it depends on the nature of the account and how they’re using it. So there’s, as you can imagine, a lot of variety amongst 2 billion Gmail user accounts. I think some of the factors that I would maybe consider is whether this is your daily used email, is this something that you routinely log in to every day. So, an absence of logging in would be noticeable and impact your life or is it likely to contain information that your loved ones really really need. So for those types of accounts, perhaps a shorter window makes sense. If it’s an account that you don’t really log in to and you check it once every few months, then of course a longer login activity window makes sense. So it really depends on the user and how they’re using the service. Just something to be aware of is that we can’t disclose your data until the time that you’ve elected entirely runs and it assesses multiple forms of activity on the back end. So that’s just something to keep in mind and you know, folks can make a conservative election with that in mind if they prefer or something longer term.

Host: So Ayesha, if I have a Gmail account and I have a Google Drive account, is it possible with the Inactive Account Manager to designate 2 separate people for each account? So I could name one person on my Gmail account and a completely different person on my Google Drive?

Ayesha Minhaj: Yeah, so you can elect up to 10 different individuals to receive different data points associated with your account. So when you go through the tool and you’re selecting folks, so let’s say you select one individual and for now, let’s say we’re talking about your mom, you provide their email and then you get a sort of list of all the Google services that are integrated into Inactive Account Manager and there’s a lot on that list and you can pick from that list what you would like to share with your mom specifically. So you can click Drive and Photos and that would be shared with the email address that you provided for your mother. Then for the next user that you elect, let’s say it’s your spouse now, you input their email address and then that list appears again and you can make different elections for them. You can say that they should receive your Contacts and your Calendar. And so you can decide what data goes to which user.

Host: Ayesha, so with the ability to customize designations of information for the various recipients, is it true that the recipient also has to have a Gmail account in order to be able to receive the designated information?

Ayesha Minhaj: I don’t think so. This is something that I would need to double-check, but you can input non-Gmail email addresses and they will just get a link to download the data and so it’s shared in just a downloadable format. It’s not that the link only works when it’s shared with a Gmail user. So I believe you can designate non-Gmail users and they should be able to just similarly download the data via the link that’s shared. One random thing to just keep in mind is that for all users, the link expires. So it’s a temporary link and so, also just helpful to dedicated folks who actually check their emails and will click on the links and download the data in a time. 

Host: What happens if an email is sent to the designated account after the inactivity period has been triggered?

Ayesha Minhaj: Yeah, so the inactive account can still receive incoming emails throughout this entire time and that will not be something showing that the account is inactive because presumably of course folks can keep emailing someone if for example the user’s deceased, they can still be receiving emails to their inbox assuming they have storage and all that. So that activity would not hinder the time clock. So if they stopped storage and they’re receiving emails that would be in their inbox. And once the inactive account has run the set time, and let’s say they chose to share their email with a designated contact, that contact would get whatever was in the user’s inbox at the time of it being shared.

Host: Okay, and then if I understand you correctly, the email account would then no longer be receiving new emails after that inactivity period has triggered?

Ayesha Minhaj: Yeah, you can, I think, also elect what you want to happen. So you can elect to delete the account itself in which case, like if it could say, hey share my data and then delete the account in which case you would no longer be receiving emails. If you did not elect to delete the account if the question is after the data being shared, would the account still continue to exist in emails? I think that that would be the case, but just recently, Google did announce that after a two-year period of inactivity, there may be certain accounts that are deleted for storage reasons. So, I don’t think that goes into effect right away. We just updated our terms of service and announced this probably. But that would obviously, after two years then I imagine that data would potentially be deleted.

Host: One of the issues that I’ve run into with clients in administering estates is that oftentimes, a surviving spouse will access, whether they have the authority to do so or not is another issue, but they will access the deceased spouse’s phone. And if the deceased spouse has a google account for example on their phone and they have an inactive manager triggered, then my understanding is that accessing the phone and getting access to the email resets the clock for the inactivity account manager. Is there anything that Google can do or has Google considered this or is there any workaround for Google that doesn’t reset the clock if there’s an inadvertent trigger of the account or an unauthorized trigger of the account?

Ayesha Minhaj: Yeah, that’s a fair question and it’s a complex one. But you’re right. For example, if someone was to pass away and there’s some form of activity on a logged-in device like people log in to emails on their iPads and phones and there’s all these devices that are logged in. If family members, for example, are now using those devices and they’re refreshing your email, you know basically using the account, that does delay the Inactive Account Manager sort of window because we require no activity. And the reason we require that is because we can’t determine whether the activity is you, the user or your spouse or your mom, or whoever you’ve shared your account with. On our end, activity just looks like activity. And so, that’s something to keep in mind when you’re electing your window as well. And that’s why we rely on the user to make that election. If it’s a commonly used email and you have it logged into seven devices and you set it in an 18-month inactivity window, chances are more likely that someone in your family or someone somewhere may be using one of these devices and inadvertently may show some activity on your account. So the longer windows, I think run a little bit more risk of that if your email is logged in multiple spots. But yeah, on our end, there’s no way for us to practically solve this because we can’t tell the user from anyone else. All we see is activity on an account.

Host: So going the other way, if Google were to learn the death of a user, either through some formal government reporting system or receiving a notice of death or a death certificate. Would the inactive activity manager be triggered and would the steps initiated with that be triggered right away or does that timetable need to lapse and the formal automation needs to take the necessary steps.

Ayesha Minhaj: Yeah, it’s the latter. So, it would be the time that the user has elected to be associated with their account. So this does occasionally happen where someone may pass away and their account is showing ongoing activity and it’s usually because other folks are in the account. Their family, their spouse, whoever they potentially shared their information with. So it kind of goes back to the former answer where we can’t really tell who the user is and who all they have agreed to allow to use their account. So it may be that the user passed away and we may have even received a  death certificate showing that so-and-so passed away, but their death certificate (1) doesn’t list their email, it’s just the death certificate of an individual. (2) It’s not improper for a user to share their email with their spouse. For example, my husband probably has access to my email in many forms and I’m okay with it just from a convenience perspective. There’s also couples that have joint emails and family emails and all sorts of scenarios or multiple folks are in agreement in using one shared email account. So even in cases where there may be proof of the death of one person, it’s the account activity that we’re able to assess on the back end of, that controls whether the Inactive Account Manager clock will kick in.

Host: You know, I think we’d all like to see email addresses on a death certificate, it would make life a lot easier for a lot of parties. So just a helpful suggestion that if you could make that happen, that would be wonderful.

Ayesha Minhaj: That would certainly make our life easier as well. So yeah, I agree. So we get that a lot, right, so where folks say “Here’s Bob Smith’s death certificate” and that means that you know now ‘bobsmith@gmail.com’, I want all the data. And we say that well, we don’t know that Bob Smith whose death certificate you’re providing does in fact own ‘bobsmith@gmail.com’ just because their names are the same. You can make any email with any name, we don’t verify the name when you’re setting up an email account. So there’s no, like, one-to-one correlation between the name on a death certificate and the email. So it would save me a lot of time and avoid a lot of explanatory meetings that I have to have with folks if a death certificate also established your email account.

Host: So Ayesha, we’ve talked a lot about the Inactive Account Manager. But what if somebody doesn’t go through the process and do the Inactive Account Manager. What are the steps that happen if somebody were to approach Google without having done this Inactive Account Manager?

Ayesha Minhaj: Yeah, so Inactive Account Manager is obviously a tool that we encourage users to set up, it’s what we view as the source of truth once it is set up because it’s truly what the user has elected. But of course, there’s many users that don’t know about it or just haven’t gotten around to setting it up. So there’s a process for if there’s no Inactive Account Manager, how would a loved one or the administrator of a decedent’s estate sort of, get information that may exist in an account. We do have a workflow for that. The first step, and to be clear there’s more steps and more work involved, which is also why we sort of encourage folks to do Inactive Account Manager more. But the first step is that the requestor, which is usually the administrator of the estate submits a request via a webform that we have online and the web form has, you know different options that you can select and one of them is I would like to obtain the data associated with the deceased user’s account. And at the time of submission, you, the requester, provide your identification and you also provide a death certificate. And then, we do some internal checks on the account that you’ve requested data on and we make sure that there’s no ongoing account activity that would indicate whether there’s another active user in the account. SO that again goes to the earlier question of well what if there’s you know multiple devices that had an account logged in and a spouse or child is checking the emails on that device. On our end, we would see account activity there and we would not consider it appropriate to move forward with the disclosure of data associated with that account because we would say there’s at least one living user or a user is continuing to use the account. But assuming that it passes the checks and that there is no noticeable account activity or no detectable account activity on our end after the date of death of the decedent, we have a draft template order which makes certain findings a fact, including that the user was deceased, that they were the sole user of the account, that a disclosure would be appropriate under the SEA and/or the state RUFAADA statutes. And then we request that the administrator get that order entered and sent back to us. And then we are able to produce the contents of an account. We get this, we get asked a lot whether we can just give direct access to an account, the answer is no. First of all, our passwords are encrypted and not stored in a shareable format obviously for privacy. But more broadly, you would not want someone to step into the shoes of the user and be able to impersonate them and continue to use their account after they have passed. So to even pursue that template court order, we are just able to provide a copy of the contents of the account.

Host: Now the Inactive Account Manager tool is only available on individual google accounts. But Google also has a host of enterprise account services as well which don’t have the Inactive Account Manager function. What advice or guidance would you give for the enterprise account holder in terms of managing incapacity and death of its account holders? 

Ayesha Minhaj: Yeah, so that is one of the differences between consumer and enterprise accounts.  So on the enterprise side, one attempt at controlling this is that an enterprise has to elect I think more than one admin. So first there are admins that run an enterprise domain, and then there has to be more than one point of contact as an admin. So that admin has to provide both an in-domain email address and an out-domain email address and there has to be at least two of them I believe. But sometimes, what folks will do, it sort of defeats the purpose is that they’ll just set up two different administrator emails, but it’s the same person behind both emails. It’s just some tech guy and they’ve decided to have just one person be behind two administrative emails. And that is not advisable. So the first thing is that there should be multiple unique admins for every domain, just keeping in mind that something could happen to someone and you don’t want the sole person who can access your workspace domain to just no longer be alive or just be unreachable or to leave the organization and they’re not cooperating with you. So we do see that a little bit and I would advise against just having one person be the sole sort of tech guy and have multiple admins there. That said if you do run into that situation where your admin is unreachable, there’s a help page or workspace which allows you to submit a request for an unreachable admin which contemplates that you know the admin is deceased or they’ve left the organization or whatever the case may be and you’re just not able to reach them. So after you submit that request, there’s an automated process for determining whether you should be able to reset who the admin for the domain is. And this includes, you know a variety of checks including you having to pass various tests including a knowledge test relating to your familiarity with the domain. And I also think in terms of submitting this request, it’s a bit easier if the requester is an end-user of the domain and submitting it. So they’re within the domain and they’re just saying hey my admin is unreachable versus a completely unrelated external third party saying that the admin is unreachable and they need to get access to the domain in some form. As you can imagine the latter will require far more proof than the former. But, obviously, there’s various knowledge tests involved and the request has to be reviewed. So it’s a lot more work and so the easiest thing is to just have multiple admins appointed and change your admins as needed if you know that someone is leaving the company and appoint another admin, you know, that sort of stuff.

Host: So going back to the individual for a second. You outlined before, the process that an executor or a power of attorney, or a trustee would go through in order to gain access to a deceased/incapacitated individual’s account in the absence of the inactivity account manager. But sometimes, the executor or the power of attorney or the trustee or the fiduciary need to get quick access to this information, and there’s not necessarily the time to go to court and get a court order because some jurisdictions may not have this process in place where you can just easily go in and go get a court order. Is there any process within Google to expedite the process so that fiduciaries can get access quicker?

Ayesha Minhaj: There’s no way to really expedite it. If Inactive Account Manager is not set up and we’re going through the workflow of the administrator of an estate submitting a request online for data, the process is unfortunately quite lengthy and it does require a court order. So there’s no ability to just, you know, send us a request and right away you have the contents of the account. And, I think a lot of this goes back to just relying on the user to set up the Inactive Account Manager and to the extent it’s set up, taking that as the source of truth for inactivity. So if they wanted a long inactivity window, that’s what’s gonna control, even if there’s someone in a fiduciary role who after the user’s date of death imminently needs data from their account, it’s really the user’s election that controls. If Inactive Account Manager is not set up and they’re submitting just the request through our web form, it takes time for us to assess the nature of the account to make sure there’s no ongoing activity and we do require a court order. Just, unfortunately, it does take time to get that court order. In our experience, it hasn’t been a prohibitive amount of time if there’s already a probate proceeding happening, it’s been fairly easy for folks to get the order entered, but there’s a little bit of back and forth and us you know, checking the account, sharing the order, the requester modifying the order to input the exact products and services they’re interested in, then getting that order entered in and sent back to us. It is a time-intensive process, and it’s a legal process, which just goes back to us always preferring when Inactive Account Manager is set up and we know that’s what the user wanted and it’s automated and it’s much less work and much less messy.

Host: So Ayesha, in Pennsylvania, when RUFADAA was drafted, they provided in the statute that a short certificate would serve as proof of ownership of an online account. And because in Pennsylvania, the process is a little different. You don’t have to go to court to start a probe; they put that into RUFADAA for the specific purpose of not having to go to court for every single digital asset. I’m wondering if Google has come across the issue yet in any states where there are statutes that provide that you don’t have to go to court to get this court order. Have you guys run into this yet?

Ayesha Minhaj: So I can’t remember from a state-by-state breakdown of where we run into issues, but we routinely run into folks just not wanting to get a court order because it’s more work. And we do maintain the position as of right now that we require it. I think this is generally consistent with state RUFADAA statutes which obviously vary a little bit but I believe most of them do have a  provision where the service provider is allowed to require a court order. Maybe Pennsylvania may not have that, I’m not sure off the top of my head. But I think one of the difficulties here is that there’s you know, 50 states and they may all have their own RUFADAA sort of adoptions and minor tweaks. In terms of like operational ability to have 50 different you know, webforms and tools for different states is just not very feasible. And so we try to have a process that is more on the more protective end for the user data as opposed to the less protective end and so that’s why we require a court order which I think is in line with the SCA broadly, but also in line with a majority as I understand it, state RUFADAA statutes which allow service providers to require that.

Host: And for those of our listeners who are unfamiliar with what RUFADAA is, it is the Revised Uniform Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act, that the majority of states in the United States have promulgated in some form. And if you wanna learn more about RUFADAA and some of the other features of Inactive Account Manager, last year, Justin, Ross, and Ayesha, and myself as well as a few other speakers presented a CLE for The Pennsylvania Bar Institute that is available on their website.

Host: Ayesha, I’m curious about feedback that you’ve received from trust and state attorneys. We obviously, within our networks have talked about digital assets and planning and administration with our network. But the feedback you’ve received, positive and negative is probably quite different, and a wider spectrum. Do you care to comment on any positives and negatives you’ve heard from the T&E community?

Ayesha Minhaj: Sure. I think generally the feedback I’ve received is very positive and appreciative of the tool. Sometimes folks don’t know what exists when they learn about it, they think that’s great. A lot of folks have also just built it into their trust and estate practice, when they’re meeting with a new client, they’ve added it to the checklist of what they ask their clients to do just as part of good housekeeping. So they say you know, please look at your Inactive Account Manager, set that up if you haven’t already, so I like hearing that. But really the feedback has been really really positive, I think folks are appreciative of how easy the tool is to use, how generally all-encompassing it is, like how many different Google products are covered within it and I haven’t actually gotten any sort of really negative feedback. So it’s been a really good sort of feedback so far.

Host: Does Google have any industry predictions about the complexity of managing Digital Assets and Estate Planning and Estate Administration? 

Ayesha Minhaj: I don’t really have any predictions, but it’s, you know, sort of a constantly changing landscape, and the amount of products, services, tools, data, it always continues to grow. So my hope is just that tools like Inactive Account Manager become more common across not just Google, but other companies as well and that users have just, you know, more and more control over what happens to their data once they’re gone. But as I think the world of data grows, the need for tools like this will also grow. And so, I imagine that these tools will be more common across more companies, the tools will be built better, they will capture more and more data, and hopefully just gives users more autonomy.

Host: So Google is one of the first providers to have an online tool and a number of providers have followed suit as a result of the leadership that Google has taken in this area. I’m wondering though, if you have any thoughts about Apple’s recent announcements about their rollout of the digital legacy program later in the year. Is that program impacting the Inactive Account Manager tool or any changes in the horizon?

Ayesha Minhaj: Yeah, I saw that and I think it’s great that more companies are thinking about this and more companies are coming up with these tools. I don’t think it’s launched, I think it’s in beta form right now, so I actually haven’t tried it out. But I think the concept is like you said, very similar to Inactive Account Manager. I think you can elect one contact, which is a little bit different. But I’m all in favor of companies giving users the ability to all their data. And I don’t think it’s, to my knowledge, impacted anything with regards to how Google is using or implementing an Inactive Account Manager, but overall, I think it’s a positive development and something that’s great to see.

Host: I definitely agree and I think we are just at the beginning of a new type of tech planning that will hopefully be cohesive with other estate planning initiatives and what advisors really need to be aware of is that these tools exist, clients are using them, and they need to ask the question to receive this type of information when doing estate planning or other types of business succession planning. But these are always going to continue to evolve as tech expands and our digital asset classes continue to grow.

Host: Ayesha, thank you so much for taking the time to talk to us today about Google’s Inactive Account Manager and for teaching all our listeners about the Inactive Account Manager. For Jen and Ross, thank you so much for listening to Digital Planning Podcast and we’ll see you next time. 

Announcer: Thank you for listening to this episode of the Digital Planning Podcast, the podcast designed to educate individuals about all things digital in connection with estate planning, business planning, and estate administration.