Gmail Post Mortem Request

Question

So I just got a weird email from postmortemrequests@google.com to my gmail account. Basically it says Google has received a request for the email content of my account. I have 3 weeks to respond to prevent this from happening. I can't believe this is even a thing. What if I didn't see this, or was on a multiweek backpacking trip (which I have done). Probably related, I renewed my domain name a couple of hours before.Is this legit? It says it came from a google.com email, I'm pretty sure it's no longer possible to forge the sender of an email.

dekhn · Accepted Answer

I can't say whether your specific email is legit, but I do see chat forums online discussing being able to submit postmortem requests to Google (using that terminology).If I read it correctly somebody would have had to send a request to Google and convince them to hand things over (say, with some legal documentation).

petee · Answer

I think you'd have to check the email headers, the sender can still be spoofedEdit: on second thought, I don't know how Google handles their own domain-as-sender