Death-Defying Websites Pass Crucial Info to the Grieving

Services help the departed relay account numbers, passwords, and documents

September 17, 2009 RSS Feed Print

Comment (6)
Tweet

Deathswitch.com: This site sends periodic messages to account holders. If they don't respond, it assumes they've died (or gone into a coma) and sends an E-mail to a beneficiary. Users can put account numbers, passwords, document locations, love notes, or "unspeakable secrets" into the E-mail. A free account allows one note to one beneficiary. For $20 a year, Deathswitch will send as many as 30 E-mails to as many as 10 recipients each. Notes from the premium account can include attachments, such as copies of documents, photos, or videos. Users can set how frequently they want Deathswitch to confirm they're alive and how long the service should wait before contacting beneficiaries.

SlightlyMorbid.com: A trusted friend or loved one is the key to this service, which depends on a third party to notify it when an account holder has died. At its most basic level, the service will send an E-mail to 10 friends and can be notified by one "trusted contact." The premium service allows any of 10 trusted contacts to set notifications into motion and will send messages to 50 friends. SlightlyMorbid isn't all about death, though. (In fact, there are plans to change the name to DesignatedContact.com.) Users can set up messages to be sent in the case of accident, absence, or disaster—say, having to scat for a hurricane but wanting to let everyone quickly know you're OK. The service sets itself up like getting a will written. It charges a one-time fee that allows changes to friends and trusted contacts lists for three years. After that, changes cost another one-time fee. The fees range from $9 for a basic account to $50 for the premium account.

Tags:: death

Reader Comments Read all comments (6)

Add Your Thoughts Comment Name State Email

Please enter the two words below into the text field underneath the image.

Your comment will be posted immediately, unless it is spam or contains profanity. For more information, please see our Comments FAQ.

When my mother became sick and eventually died it took years to clean up the mess. From my experience I can tell you that all of these products fall short of offering a comprehensive solution to arranging your final affairs. Estate++ offers more features, more upload storage space, for much less money.

James Bell of NC 5:09PM October 13, 2009

Forty years ago, long before we used the Internet for everything, a magazine article suggested that readers write a letter to their spouse, to be opened in the event of the reader's death. In the letter readers were encouraged to list the location of life insurance policies, wills, deeds, etc. We were also reminded that this could be a love letter, a "see-you-on-the-other-side" letter, could contain a home movie (after all, this was 40 hears ago), an audio recording, and/or anything else we wished. The letter and other contents should be sealed in a suitable envelope, we were told, clearly labeled, and put in a safe spot in the home, with a note in the reader's wallet and as copy of the note in the spouse's purse stating the location of the letter.
It was low tech, free, easily updated, and not subject to cyber thieves or the possibility of a Web repository going out of business.
I wrote mine in 1969. On a typewriter. Virtually everything in it has been updated (including the name of my spouse, after my divorce and remarriage), but I still have the original, just for the memories.
Neither that letter, not a data-keeping Web site, takes the place of a will, of course. But it seems that letter provides all of the basic services offered by the high-tech Web sites.
I suppose the letter could be lost in a fire or flood. Maybe I should keep a copy at my office, too.

Tom of CA 5:19PM September 21, 2009

After my husband found he had lung cancer we started to prepair for his passing. Although we felt we had everything in place I found that the one thing we had not thought of was his computer accounts. Just before he passesed he handed me a scrunched up paper that had accounts and passwords on it. The only problem was nothing matched. It took me over a year to get all his accounts closed. I thought I was done. Wrong. Almost 2 years after his death I started receiving overdue bills for accounts I had no idea he had. It was a nightmair. Now that I'm a widow with no children or family I turned to Legacy Locker to help me set up an account so that my accounts can be handled by a person I feel comfortable with leaving my lifes legacy to.

EllenMae Serviss of AZ 5:40PM September 18, 2009