Mail forwarding in an emergency

[BubbleSnap]

This is a service feature that came to me a while ago, and I believe it is something that is useful and probably easy to do, but probably a little off the beaten track, and possibly a little morbid.

The rationale for it is that very often these days, mail is used for paperless billing, statements etc as well as for keeping contact with friends, and the networks built up this way aren't as obvious as with a mobile or s-mail.

What I thought would be useful was a feature that allowed you to redirect your email or at least sent a notification mail to a designated alternate address if your account hasn't been accessed in N days.

The point of this isn't obvious until you consider what might happen should you fall seriously ill (possibly unable to communicate) or if you should pass away. Most of the time, next of kin can deal with mobiles and s-mails as these are tangible things - but email isn't always accessible. How many people give their mail account details to their next of kin?

If this feature or something like it were implemented as an option, it would allow a user to have some degree of peace of mind that should something happen, his or her next of kin could deal with a lot of the "commercial" mails people receive these days as paperless billing kicks in, and to keep friends they might not be otherwise aware of informed as to what might be happening.

Re-reading it, it does seem to be probably a minority feature, but comment away if you wish anyway.

[hadaso]

Originally posted by BubbleSnap
... or if you should pass away...

What you want is to hire a lawyer and write a will... Then you can write your acount ID and pasword on a piece of paper and put it in an envelope and seal the envelope and put it in a safe, and the will will say where it is and who gets acccess to it in what case. With a layer as a trustee similar arrangement can be set with situations other than death. And of course you can buy life insurance that would cover the losses should an email account become inaccessible after death.

You might just use a reminder service such as onlinehomebase.com to send the email account details somehere at a preset time, and a reminder to you to postpone this sending from time to time so it won't happen while you're still alive.

Or you might want to keep your FM account to use when you're in heaven...

edit: typo

[BubbleSnap]

I was kind of factoring in that a lot of people don't update their wills that often, but a good point, and the right way to do it.

Oh well, the idea fizzles slowly away, as usual!

I don't think FM have the heaven franchise sorted out.

[eggman]

it is available though:
https://www.dot.fm/order0.cfm?domain...TOKEN=96436027

[hadaso]

Anyway, I was thinking about it, and apart from replacing a real will, an option to schedule a message to be sent after a predefined inactivity period, or at a certain time+date on condition of a minimal inactivity period before sending (either persistent or canceled when activity is resumed) can be quite valuable in any reminder service.

Example: you write a note with instructions that is only sent in case you fail to be back on time from a meeting. If you are back in time accessing your email cancels the sending of those instructions with the need of further intervention.

Another example: I need a reminder after almost 4 weeks of inactivity to login into my guest account to keep it active (writing this post served as a reminder today. and it was 3 weeks and 6 days since the last login).

[BubbleSnap]

Hmmm... Sounds covert

I actually agree, there are some situations where the value does exist.

I don't think I've seen anything that does this kind of thing integrated with the mail service, and can't help thinking it is quite straight forward to do.

[eggman]

Maybe you can set your lawyers email address as the backup address and leave them instructions to use it here?

http://www.sent.com/mail/?MLS=LN-*;U...8746a83225312c!1136684934;UDm=485;MSignal=LP-*

[eggman]

hi hadaso

why not use a webmail service to check your guest account via pop. That keeps the guest account alive.

cheers

[hadaso]

Originally posted by eggman
why not use a webmail service to check your guest account via pop. That keeps the guest account alive.

One reason might be that guest accounts don't get POP3 access. But then I can just set FastCheck to monitor those accounts using IMAP, or use any IMAP client, or perhaps also have NetDrive login to the filespace - that might also count as logging in.

[eggman]

One reason might be that guest accounts don't get POP3 access

ah yes, forgot about that one :-)

You get an email sent to your backup account which is how I keep my test account alive...