X-Message-Number: 31691
Date: Tue, 19 May 2009 22:26:39 -0400
Subject: Assigning passwords after death
From: Charles Platt <>

I found this on a mail list for funeral directors, to which I subscribe:

--

Jeremy Toeman, founder of the site Legacy Locker, recognized that . .
. while his will leaves everything to his wife, including all of his
digital assets . . . how difficult it would be for her to access his
accounts.

"My GoDaddy account would belong to her, but it doesn't solve the
practical reality of how she would get access to it," he said. He
experienced a similar scenario after his grandmother died, and he
tried to get the password for her e-mail account -- only to give up
because of the hassle.

So Toeman built his company to change all that. Legacy Locker allows
users to set up a kind of online will, with beneficiaries that would
receive the customer's account information and passwords after they
die.

"We know it's a hard thing to think about -- to get people to face
mortality. We know it's kind of morbid, but for those who live their
entire lives online, it's also very real."

A Legacy Locker account costs $29.99 a year. Users can set up their
accounts at www.legacylocker.com to specify who gets access to their
posthumous online information, along with "legacy letters," or
messages, that can be sent to loved ones.

If someone contacts Legacy Locker to report a client's death, the
service will send the customer four e-mails in 48 hours. If there's no
response, Legacy Locker will then contact the people the client listed
as verifiers in the event of his or her death. Even then, the service
would not release digital assets without examining a copy of the
customer's death certificate, Toeman said.

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