EmailDiscussions.com - View Single Post

TenFour · 15 Aug 2020, 11:13 PM

Thread revival! In the time of COVID-19 this issue becomes serious for many people. Here in the USA more than 200,000 have died, and I suspect most of them did not expect to when they started to feel ill. This puts a spotlight on the issue that much of our digital lives will just evaporate eventually after we are gone. Personally, the main two things that worry me are causing huge hassles for my loved ones and losing my photographs extending back to when digital photos first became widely used. The hassles could be things like being unable to pay the electric, gas, or cell phone bills and/or not even remembering that it has to be done, because as of now these bills are only sent to me via email and are paid automatically from a checking account that is also managed online. Or, not being able to access that money in the online banking account. The list goes on and on of important things that would be difficult to deal with if my email account expired or became unavailable for some reason. One thought I've had for those that use paid email services is to consider having them automatically backed up to one or more reliable free services like Gmail or Outlook.com, that probably won't go away instantly if a bill isn't paid. As I noted above, Gmail has the Inactive Account Manager feature that could help too. One thing I do too is periodically print out on a piece of paper a list of important information, passwords, etc., that is stored in a secure location that other family members know about. But, someone still has to remember to save the email and photos and whatever else you have stored somewhere. This is a good argument in favor of using a local email client and local storage of important photos and documents, but you still have the issue of losing access to that email account if the bill isn't paid.

15 Aug 2020, 11:13 PM	#9
TenFour Master of the @ Join Date: Feb 2017 Location: USA Posts: 1,740	Thread revival! In the time of COVID-19 this issue becomes serious for many people. Here in the USA more than 200,000 have died, and I suspect most of them did not expect to when they started to feel ill. This puts a spotlight on the issue that much of our digital lives will just evaporate eventually after we are gone. Personally, the main two things that worry me are causing huge hassles for my loved ones and losing my photographs extending back to when digital photos first became widely used. The hassles could be things like being unable to pay the electric, gas, or cell phone bills and/or not even remembering that it has to be done, because as of now these bills are only sent to me via email and are paid automatically from a checking account that is also managed online. Or, not being able to access that money in the online banking account. The list goes on and on of important things that would be difficult to deal with if my email account expired or became unavailable for some reason. One thought I've had for those that use paid email services is to consider having them automatically backed up to one or more reliable free services like Gmail or Outlook.com, that probably won't go away instantly if a bill isn't paid. As I noted above, Gmail has the Inactive Account Manager feature that could help too. One thing I do too is periodically print out on a piece of paper a list of important information, passwords, etc., that is stored in a secure location that other family members know about. But, someone still has to remember to save the email and photos and whatever else you have stored somewhere. This is a good argument in favor of using a local email client and local storage of important photos and documents, but you still have the issue of losing access to that email account if the bill isn't paid.