Ever thought what would happen to you email account after you die? Chances are that either your spouse or your entire family may get access to your inbox.

Web email services like Gmail and Hotmail do not let users specify what should happen to their messages when they die. In fact, Internet giants like Google and Microsoft have a policy of keeping your data after you die and letting your next of kin or the executor of your estate access it.

Accounts with Google’s Gmail can hold up to 7GB – or roughly 70,000 emails with a small to medium picture attached to each and they archive the messages you’ve written as well as received.

When it comes to deleting the data, Microsoft’s Hotmail will remove an account if it is inactive for 270 days, while Gmail leaves the responsibility to the next of kin. Of the top three providers, only Yahoo! refuses to supply emails to anyone after the user has died. The next of kin of the user can only ask for the account to be closed. He will not gain access to it. A Yahoo! spokesperson said the only exception to this rule would be if the user specified otherwise in their will.

Facebook, a popular social-networking site, has recently publicized a feature called memorialisation that lets the family of deceased users keep their profile page online as a virtual tribute. On the other hand, MySpace says it addresses the issue of family access to sensitive data on a “case by case basis”. A spokesperson for MySpace could not rule out letting a user’s next of kin log into their profile – potentially giving them access to private messages.

Remember, your long kept secretes may not be secret after all.

Tags: email, email death, email expiry