How To Send Email When You're Dead 165
The Narrative Fallacy writes "'The Last Messages Club' is a new service that sends personal emails written prior to one's death to loved ones in the future. The messages can range from a final love letter, guidance for someone left behind, a list of instructions, details on life insurance and other financial information. 'No one likes to think about their impending "demise," but it is much better to be fully-prepared, so that there is less stress on your loved ones after you pass away,' says founder Geoff Reiss. The system works by giving each member a secure and private vault where they are able to create messages to be sent specifically to their chosen recipient. A secure process ensures that messages are only sent after at least two people appointed by the user have confirmed that you have died and other safety criteria are met. 'I thought at first that maybe it was a bit ghoulish but on consideration I think it's a great idea as it would be nice for loved ones to receive messages from me when I'm no longer here,' says a technical adviser to the company. 'It's strange really as it makes you confront your own mortality in a sense.'"
Creepy... (Score:5, Interesting)
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What would really be creepy is if the "Reply" button was greyed out. Or, if you hit Reply, Outlook would raise the message box: The intended recipient is not available, and never will be. If you would like to leave a thoughtful message, perhaps you should have communicated some of that when s/he was still alive.
Re:Creepy... (Score:4, Funny)
Something like :
"This is the mail system at host xxxxx.
I'm sorry to have to inform you that your message could not
be delivered to one or more recipients. It's attached below.
For further assistance, please send mail to postmaster. "
I get that all the time , from people who are alive , but their mailboxes have sadly passed away.
Re:Creepy... (Score:5, Funny)
Sounds like an old joke (Score:2)
Re:Creepy... (Score:5, Funny)
Of course, you might get sent to hell for that.
Re:Creepy... (Score:5, Funny)
Maybe my twitter could be along the lines of "now i'm in a better place than my parents basement".
Ok yes, it's creepy...
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Maybe my twitter could be along the lines of "now i'm in a better place than my parents basement".
A better plaec? Do you mean the great basement in the sky, with no entrance (so no-one bothers you), huge pizza that grows back overnight no matter how much of it you eat, and a never-ending LAN party?
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What if laststatusupdate.com for example, changes my facebook status from single (we all know this is slashdot) to passed away.
I'd also want a cron job that posts "still dead" randomly every 2-6 days.
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Perhaps Cowboy Neal now has a new revenue stream.
"Finally get that 'First POST' - after your final day - Send 99.95 to Cowboy Neal! Do it Today!!"
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If you're a "first post" poster then you're going to Hell anyway. :-)
Re:Creepy... (Score:4, Funny)
One late ./er did better than this. When Roland Piquepaille passed away, he posted a comment on his own Obituary thread [slashdot.org].
NOW THAT'S CREEPY!
And don't forget the Rapture! (Score:2)
Hey man, don't forget that Rapture thing. Yeah, there's like a zillion rapture e-mail sites, which are supposed to email all those suckers who don't get RAPTURED!! along with you.
Really heavy duty, doods! I mean, Sarah Palin might even be an email buddy on one of those sites (Swwwooooooonnnnn!).
Where's my barf bag????
Re:Creepy... (Score:5, Insightful)
It would depend on the state and the intent of the mail. Wills have traditionally required a lot of formalities to be effective (e.g., signatures of the testator and witnesses) with some interesting exceptions (e.g., the "holographic" will, a will written *entirely* in the hand of the testator). Many states have loosened up on the formalities though, but the document would still need to be a clear expression of the intent of the deceased.
Plus, there could be some confusion if the document promised one thing, but another document promised something conflicting. Which one takes precedent? Would courts decide based on when the documents were created or when they were intended to be delivered?
Another thing to consider is that these messages to be sent after death would probably be easier to obtain during lawsuit discovery than a will. A will written with an attorney's assistant may be a privileged document. If subpoenaed, The Last Messages Club may (or may not) fight to protect messages not yet delivered from discovery. But courts are less likely to protect such messages from disclosure than a will (although, perhaps various courts will agree to in camera review, meaning that the judge looks at the document first to decide whether it is relevant to the litigation at hand).
One last thing to consider: your message might produce evidence that could lead to a lawsuit against your estate, and thus hold up your assets. The Last Messages Club could mitigate this problem by allowing your messages to be put on hold for a number of years after receiving proof of your death. This could help ensure that your estate has been disbursed and increase the probability of a statute of limitations being hit.
As is, The Last Messages Club should probably be used to send those personal messages that don't have any real legal implications. If you want to write a will, hire a lawyer and do it right, don't try to do it yourself with a somewhat gimicky service.
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What's wrong with setting up a cron job to run sendmail just before you die? That's what I usually do... Oh, wait...
Re:Creepy... (Score:5, Interesting)
My grandmother recently passed away. She had made a number of arrangements including her burial, the religious services, final wishes, and what not. It was a huge help and comfort for us. We had a set of guides to help us make decisions that we think that she would have preferred. Such decisions are difficult under normal circumstances but even more difficult right after she died. My father on the other hand made almost no provisions, and it was all the more difficult to get through the situation.
I no longer see this as creepy but as a healthy and respectful way to treat your loved ones and to help them prepare for what they will have to face.
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I can see some epic pranks happening with this service in the future. =P
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Creepy? I'll say. Mabe even downright stupid.
Not at all. The summary clearly states that it requires 2 people that YOU appoint to confirm death before they will send the e-mail. This means these two people need to know about the service. I would suppose in most cases at least one of these two would be your intended recipient, meaning they know to expect the e-mail. Even if people receiving it weren't on your confirmation list I'm sure the site's intention is to warn those who would receive the e-mail before passing so there are no bad surprises.
You
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Not at all. The summary clearly states that it requires 2 people that YOU appoint to confirm death before they will send the e-mail. This means these two people need to know about the service.
I had a much better idea, never started the project though.
You can (optionally) encrypt the messages via GPG and upload them to the site. Address them to whomever you want. (E-mail is free, if you want something sent out via postal mail, you must put a deposit on your account.) You set a timer--like 2 days, 1 week, 1 month, etc... You signing into the website resets the timer. If you don't sign in, the system assumes you are dead and your stuff is delivered. Obviously with options to remind you via
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At least one potential downside is that you forget to log in. Then everyone gets a deathgram and you've scared the hell out of everyone.
That's why I mentioned in my post about a 'reminder' feature. Say you set your your 'death timer' at 1 month and your reminder at 1 week. When you have 1 week left on your timer, you get an email or SMS. And ultimately, if you set this all up and totally forget about it and/or ignore it, there's not much I can do. I can't tell the difference between 'dead you' and 'I-forgot-to-sign-in you'.
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I was very tempted to do this, but not via a third party -- or at least, not a website-as-a-third-party.
This is mainly because if I'm dead, I have no secrets of my own to keep anymore, so I'd probably want my friends and family to have access to all my stuff -- ssh keys, gpg keys, porn, various email addresses, etc -- as a way to share more with them than I'd be willing to while I'm alive.
Plus, the whole "Do NOT send keys/passwords via email!" may carry a bit more weight when it's my final will and testamen
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if I'm dead, I have no secrets of my own to keep anymore, so I'd probably want my friends and family to have access to all my stuff -- ssh keys, gpg keys, porn
I can imagine it now...
Timmy: I sure miss dad.
Billy: Me too. But he left me $5,000. What'd he leave you?
Timmy: A NAS with 8 TB of porn...
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I was thinking more along the lines of:
Tim: I sure miss my father. I wonder what he was really like?
Bill: Well, he was into sodomizing goats.
Tim: That explains so much...
(For the record, I'm not actually into sodomizing goats. It's an example.)
Of course, now that I think about it, that would probably end up playing out something like this [youtube.com]...
I suppose the point is, rather, that I have no particular reason to hide porn once I'm dead. And if they're offended, too bad, I'm already dead.
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I also agree that a simple handwritten note kept in a safety deposit box labeled with the recipients name(s) is a far better solution for your basic letter from the grave. A loved one then has a physical letter that he/she can hold and keep. Instead of a sterile electronic message.
Now what a service like this would be good for is if you had a wide list of people you wish to inform of your death. Say I want to spam 100 people when I die, like inform an online community that I will no longer be around to make
Re:Creepy... (Score:5, Insightful)
A friend of mine's mother passed away a few years ago, and before she died she told her daughter that she had left a very important letter for her. She said that her daughter would find it after she passed away. Well, my friend spent months tearing apart her mother's house and belongings, and never found the letter. Did her mother change her mind at the last minute? Did she hide it too well? Had she never gotten around to writing it? One thing that an email service has going for it is that the message is delivered. There is no finding involved. My friend will agonize about that letter for the rest of her life.
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Was her mom a big prankster by any chance?
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I'd be too tempted to have my message be something like, "Come to the Wired. God is here. The other side is full; the dead will have no place to go."
I LOL'd (Score:5, Funny)
"No one likes to think about their impending demise"
Ever been married?
Captcha: ethanolfueledisafaggot
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Yes, but I don't like to think about it.
Sounds like a movie (Score:3, Funny)
And for the fundies... (Score:3, Funny)
There's http://www.youvebeenleftbehind.com/ [youvebeenleftbehind.com].
Really- it's not a joke.
Old news... (Score:1)
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I got the sickness (Score:5, Funny)
What if you are undead? Does the email get sent?
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Stupid business model (Score:3, Insightful)
A secure process ensures that messages are only sent after at least two people appointed by the user have confirmed that you have died and other safety criteria are met.
Might as well get these two people to send that mail directly to my loved ones.
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Also, if you give it directly to those two people, you know that if one of them should turn up dead, too, your message will be sent anyways. Since those people are inevitably some you have very close relations to, it's not unlikely that in case of a deadly accident, one of them might have been involved, too.
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This isn't news anyway. Websites like this have been around for a while [ktvu.com]. There are a few others I've seen, but I can't remember their names.
I've never complained about what makes it to the front page on Slashdot, but really, the only thing connecting this to Slashdot's genre (news for nerds, stuff that matters) is that it has something to do with email.
Re:Stupid business model (Score:4, Insightful)
Re-inventing the wheel (Score:5, Insightful)
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Yeah. People w
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You are of course correct,
However, if there was an option for sending letters out at specific times after your demise, that might offer some additional value. Being able to send your kids a message on their significant birthdays, for their (first) marriage, the birth of your first grandchild, etc. Things like that might add some value, of course such letters could sit in the same folder your propose, and wouldn't have to worry about technologies changing, new addresses, or the spam filter, but would be les
Reach out to more people (Score:3, Interesting)
The emails can be sent to many many people, even those who probably would not read the will. Like maybe telling an old boss something, etc.
John Donne (Score:5, Funny)
Ask not for who the inbox chimes; it chimes for thee
Nothing classier than last greetings via email (Score:5, Funny)
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nothing classier;
except perhaps the death tweet on twitter...
(something like the internet version of a death rattle)
Re:Nothing classier than last greetings via email (Score:5, Funny)
Or some kind of lolcat. "Im in ur coffin feedin ur wormz".
Yeah, right... (Score:1)
Law and Order (Score:1)
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If I remember, it wasn't a bug so much as a design flaw. Only three people have to check in, if two of the three don't, it sends the messages. So all that has to happen is for two people to simultaneously be unable to reach a computer for long enough.
Comment on Slashdot when you're dead (Score:1, Funny)
Death Messages (Score:2)
Legacy Locker is another one http://legacylocker.com/ [legacylocker.com]. There was also one a while back specifically for online gamers. If you failed to login in a certain period of time, your guild (or whatever) was notified of your apparent demise.
examples (Score:1)
Not sensible (Score:2)
Most of us can't even reliably archive our family photos on a computer.
Some companies charged with keeping people frozen cryogenicly can't even be trusted to do that job, and in those scenarios, the frozen person's potential future life is at stake.
All those important post-mortem details mentioned in the summary can very reliably be handled with a safe deposit box, and one or more executors.
Easy no fees secure method exists. (Score:4, Insightful)
Some People! (Score:5, Funny)
Some people will go to very great lengths in order to get "the last word" in on anything. If you are one of those people, this service is for you!
Re: the last word (Score:2)
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This brings about the possibility for competing services. Your email gets hosted by this new company who checks whether there are any SMTP connections initiated from that service. If it detects one, it temporarily rejects the email then alerts the hit squad to kill you. Finally, once you are confirmed dead it will then accept the email and a highly trained team of witty satirists will compose and deliver a suitable comeback to the next of kin of the person who sent you the email.
Am i the only one who was expecting this: (Score:2)
How To Send Email When You're Dead [wordpress.com]
What about the bounces? (Score:2)
How many people change their email addresses and won't receive your message - or have your death message filtered as spam?
How about the good old practice of giving real letters to your attorney and having the firm mail them after you die. Returned mail would be cause for the firm to track down the party who didn't receive the letter...
Draft (Score:2, Interesting)
A Better Solution (Score:2)
Who's going to be the first sick bastard... (Score:2)
...to email "you were ADOPTED and we never loved you!" to his kid?
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...to email "you were ADOPTED and we never loved you!" to his kid?
I was thinking more about pwning the server and sending one to everyone else's kid. 8^)
Security? (Score:2, Insightful)
Last Messages Club is as secure as a bank.
That's exactly what i'm worried about, that it's just as (in)secure as a bank.
If you post all your passwords and papers on a service like this to give to your loved ones when they're gone...
And then the site gets pwn3d by some 13-year-old script kiddie, who dumps the database and starts selling the data, what then?
I think i'll stick with paper letters, a bank lock box, and a safe with the key in it..
(That my survivors get a safe technician to drill in order
Heinlein did ths decades ago... (Score:2)
in his Lazarus Long series, IIRC. It was called "Delay Mail," and was intended for use by time-travellers; there was an office where one could leave messages to be delivered to a specified person (possibly one's younger self) on a specified date, possibly centuries in the future.
I'm afraid this constitutes prior art (insert clever time-travel remark here)...
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Usually, it's not for the dead, it's for the living. It's a last laugh you can give them, a last memory, a last reminder of who you were.
Or, as the funeral industry calls it, Goatse from the Grave.
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It could very well be that you are not the first to go and then you will walk around with the idea of 'why did I not say it?'.
If I really can't say it, then yeah, that's a risk I have to take.
If you can't say it now, it isn't worth saying at all.
Let's take a really simple example: Say you hate your boss. You hate everything about the fucker. But you play nice, because you want to keep your job.
Granted, I'd probably want out, but the way the economy is now, I'd want a better offer lined up, first.
So yes, it would be kind of cool if, having died before getting that better offer, I could let him know what a prick I thought he was.
Your advice is generally useful, and there are a lot of t
The Tasha Yar memorial cube... (Score:2)
Reminds me of the Tasha Yar memorial video they played on ST:TNG after she got killed. After watching that thing, I decided that I was pretty happy that she got whacked.
What I want (Score:2)
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Problem is, how do we know people will still be using anything like email ten years from now?
Seems to me, this would be an expensive service to maintain.
Spam (Score:5, Funny)
Reminds me of something (Score:2)
Don't be a freak (Score:2)
An email from the grave falls into the same category as making the stupid joke of saying "no" at your wedding. You didn't mean it but your SO is shattered. Let's face it, most of our funerals will be nothing like Graham Chapman's.
If you have anything to sa
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An email from the grave falls into the same category as making the stupid joke of saying "no" at your wedding.
Ok, if it was a joke, sure, but explain to me how this is any worse than a living will?
If you have anything to say after you kicked the bucket, leave the message at a friend or at a notary's office.
This is just a more high-tech way of doing so. It'd certainly be nice to be able to go back and edit them much more easily than going down to that notary's office, proving you are who you say you are, and replacing that piece of paper.
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If you have anything to say after you kicked the bucket, leave the message at a friend or at a notary's office.
This is just a more high-tech way of doing so. It'd certainly be nice to be able to go back and edit them much more easily than going down to that notary's office, proving you are who you say you are, and replacing that piece of paper.
Messages from the grave aren't trivial. If they were, why bother at all and go through the pain? So you think about them for a while, apply changes and after so many months you deem these ready and schedule them for release at a notary's office. Think of it as a software release. Quick fixes mean you didn't think everything through and sometimes backfire horribly.
One advantage of using the notary's office is that people will gather to hear/see your message. Imagine that uncle Phil who will inevitably rea
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So you think about them for a while, apply changes and after so many months you...
...suddenly die, before they can get to the notary's office. It may not be perfect, but you're dead, so it's better than nothing, right?
Think of it as a software release.
I am. Release early and often.
Quick fixes mean you didn't think everything through and sometimes backfire horribly.
So does holding things back for months or years, trying to perfect them. See: Windows Vista, Duke Nukem Forever...
One advantage of using the notary's office is that people will gather to hear/see your message. Imagine that uncle Phil who will inevitably read the email just before or after a chicken choke session.
The former makes sense. I'm not sure I care much about the latter.
I'm not sure I like email as a delivery mechanism, but I definitely like the idea of making it electronic. Ideally, I'd make them accessible on a website, but encrypt
I'm not dead yet (Score:2)
I'm getting better!
No, you're not. You'll be stone dead in a moment.
Free Trial! (Score:2)
Failure mode analysis (Score:2)
Here are some questions that are not answered by the FAQ:
As I've spent only a few minutes thinking this thro
Why is this news? (Score:5, Informative)
How is this different from any of the following which have been around for years?
http://www.deadmansswitch.net/ [deadmansswitch.net]
http://lastpost.com/ [lastpost.com]
http://www.youdeparted.com/ [youdeparted.com]
http://www.letterfrombeyond.com/ [letterfrombeyond.com]
http://mylastemail.com/ [mylastemail.com]
http://www.postexpression.com/ [postexpression.com]
http://www.finalthoughts.com/ [finalthoughts.com]
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Given that finalthoughts seems to be a domain squatter, and postexpression seems to be down, I think what would be new is if there was a reliable way to do this.
My own death letter (Score:2)
"brb lol!"
In soviet Russia... (Score:2)
I would sign up (Score:2)
I would sign up for this, if they gave an option of posting it as the first post under the "GNU/Hurd 1.0 Released" Slashdot story, when it happens.
and if the company goes under? (Score:2)
I think it's silly to bet on a company to outlast you (unless you are in poor health or making risky life choices)
Back in the Bad Old Pre-Net radio ham days.... (Score:2)
Quite cool actually, scream so loud in the RF spectrum that some proto-geek on the far side of the planet can hear you.
Anyhoo, in those distant days hams confirmed radio contact by exchanging postcards. Called them CQ cards if I remember correctly. Sort of a touch of something physical to go with the ethereal.
Well, my dad was one of those 1950'60's era radio hams.... but he died when I was young.
Strangely enough, about a year after he
Death Note... (Score:2)
Heh Heh...
Great Service (Score:2)
for assholes/practical jokers... Perhaps I am just a sick bastard, but the first thing I thought of was to photoshop myself into several locals and every few years or so send out a email "I'm not dead, I am in Cancun!" accompanied by a picture. Then several days later "Just kidding, still dead..." Then several years later again "Gotcha, I am really in Canada eh!" etc...
If people hate me now, wait til I am dead. This would also be good for destroying your enemies from the grave with some well timed release
Law and Order episode (Score:2)
(No, I don't believe in
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I'm sure their assassins alert them to the fact you are dead.
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