Slashdot Mirror
Send Emails After Your Death
Roland Piquepaille writes "As you all know, the two things in life you can't avoid are taxes and death. But if you will no longer have to pay taxes after your death, you will be able to send email thanks to a new service, Mylastemail.com. The Los Angeles Times (free registration needed) says this service will cost you $9.99 for a three-year subscription. The company says you can update your farewell messages from anywhere in the world, including cybercafes or airports." If it's not a hoax, it's a pretty cool service.
Quick, somebody sign up BSD, they are going to need this soon.
Now, if one could update the messages from the underworld, that might be something worth investing in.
I already have a list of people to send email to about my death in my will. It will be executed for free.
What guarantee do I have that the bulk e-mail to my friends and family won't be snagged by spam filters? That would be the final insult.
I have no doubt that I will be sending and receiving spam messages long after my own demise.
Speak truth to power.
If they don't send the e-mail, can you sue them from beyond the grave?
That's a convenient service.
I'll just wait until then to give away the money in my bank account in Nigeria.
How about a service to get a "First Post" after your death?
So long and thanks for all the fish.
Let me introduce myself to you.I'm Franka Guei, the former military ruler of ( cote d' Ivoire /ivory coast,). . ,as I confide in you hoping you will never betray me at last.n .com
I was killed on 19/9/2002 with some of my loyalist officers during a cross fire battle between us and government troops in an attempt to seize power through coup de eta in Abidjan on 19/9/2002
At the time of my death, I had the sum of Eighteen million united states dollars only(us$18m) which I still want to move out of here with most despatch despite being dead.
This money was deposited by me before I died in a security company for the purpose of using it to fine tune my administration in the invent that he succeed in the fail coup attempt.
Because of the present situation in my country cote d' ivoire, as well as my being dead, my I need a trust worthy foreign partner who can assist me to transfer the money out of South Africa for investment.
Please, I highly need your assistance both in transferring the money to your country and also investing it in a profitable venture with your kind advice
I have proposed (30%) percent of the total sum of the money for you as your own commission, so as for you to give us all necessary assistance and protection we may need in your Country. Please treat as highly confidential. All the vital documents covering the deposit of the fund in a security company are with me here and will be used to effect change of ownership in your favour for subsequent transfer to any account you may wish to use abroad.
What I want you to do is to indicate your interest that you will assist us by receiving the money on our behalf. Acknowledge this message, so that I can introduce you to my son (MIKE GUEI) who has the modalities for the claim of the said fund. The identity of the finance company where the fund is deposited, will be revealed to you by my son as soon as we recieve confirmation from you on your willingness to proceed, as seeing is believing.
Reach me through this mail box to discuss modalities on how to proceed.Reply to deadpresidentofsomeafricannation@untraceabledomai
Looking forward to hearing from you urgent.
the concept is cool, but there's one thing that doesn't make any sense.. HOW DO THEY KNOW IF YOU'VE DIED????
According to the FAQ on the site, you need to leave some kind of documentation in a place where someone will find it after you've died. That person is then responsible to contact them and have the e-mails sent. Dumb question: If you have to leave a note behind anyway, why use the e-mail service? Why not write letters in envelopes and store them in the same safe place you'll store this document?
Sounds more like a ploy to take money from the naive. Too bad I didn't think of this.
There is no reasonable defense against an idiot with an agenda
:wq
Sounds very much like the Dead Man's Switch that was covered on Slashdot a while back...
If you don't tell it you're alive every now and then, it can encrypt your files, send email, and post messages on the web. Very paranoia.
DEAR SIR / MADAM
My name is Masque and I am writing you from the republic of Heaven to beg your indulgence in the matter
I came to your name through careful study of teh intarweb and u are recommmended as a helfpul and trustworthy person who may be trusted to be helpful and I beleive I can be of help to you in return
BEFORE I WAS FORCED AGAINST MY WILL TO COME TO THE AFTERLIFE I HAD AMASSED A SMALL FORTUNE THROUGH THE LEVERAGING OF MASS EMAIL TECHNIQUES. I NEED YOUR HELP IN TRANSITIONING THESE FUNDS BACK INTO MY POSSESSIONS AFTER BEING SO RUSHEDLY FORCED TO LEAVE MY HOME FOR ASYLUM IN THIS AFTERLIFE....
"Dear world. I was a bastard. I am, however, no more. That plane i was in has crashed into a mountain and my remains have yet to be discovered.
The world considers this to be a great tragedy, but those who knew me can say that the loss of the innocents on-board was well worth my demise.
Feel welcome to defecate on my grave
Thank you.
The deceased."
And a goatse.cx follows...
Slashdot Sig. version 0.1alpha. Use at your own risk.
Anyone else see this coming?
From: MyLastEmail.com, on behalf of the late Uncle Kevin
To: My Loving Nephew
Subject: I'll miss you
Attachment: Road Rules for Drunks.ppt (7MB)
It goes from God, to Jerry, to me.
This is awesome! Now I don't have to go through all the rigamoral of finding a friend to hold snailmail evidence when I blackmail someone. Now I can just say "and if you kill me, the information will automatically be emailed to the New York Times".
The cake is a pie
Yeah, read about it already on the Register. Why would someone want to do this?
That last bunch of bru-ha-ha is the icing on the cake. Basically, this all says "Pay us money. In exchange, we promise nothing, guarantee nothing, but give you a warm fuzzy feeling that everything will be okay if you die... but we don't guarantee or even really hint that you might feel A) warm or B) fuzzy. It's all in your mind. Give us money now, please."
It seems pretty pointless to me. It might be different if A) there was any kind of "real" guarantee and B) e-mail was a more reliable, widely used medium. But the fact of the matter is that there are still millions of people who don't yet understand or even use e-mail, and those who do know that it's not always reliable. If you need this kind of service, pay a live, professional person who knows how to use e-mail, phone, fax, snail mail, etc. to inform those who need to know.
Of course, that won't stop the masses who don't understand e-mail and like warm fuzzy feelings from handing over the cash.
I haven't RTFA because that would against /. posting policy, but I suspect that they subscribe you a mailing list where you get an e-mail with the subject "Are you dead yet?" every day. If you don't reply after two days they assume you are dead and send the e-mail to your list of contacts and promptly sell the same list for profit to the DMA. Because once you're dead, it's not like you can sue them or anything.
Wearing pants should always be optional.
I have little to no contact with my family. I hate writing home. Including e-mails.
Sometimes when I travel I think about my death - I have little social life. My girlfriend doesn't know shit about my family and background.
Several times I've thought of setting up a cron job so if I don't deactivate it in a couple of days, it would notify my direct relatives about my death. Not the best thing to think about when you're about to enter a plane.
Dear Boss,
Susan pissed in your coffee,
John keyed your Jaguar,
and I was the one fucking your wife!
Have a profitable year,
A faithful employee
Mother, do you think they'll like this sig?
$9.99 for a three-year subscription
Isn't that a little pessimistic?
It goes from God, to Jerry, to me.
Let me get this straight. I print a document from the web site, give it to my trustee, and my trustee is responsible for contacting the web site to inform it that I have died? I'll just give my final messages directly to my trustee and cut out the middleman.
I "anonymous coward" of no known IP address, being sound in online connectivity, and over the age of credit card ownership,and knowing the uncertainty of dial-up connections and the certainty of disconnection and wishing to dispose of my possessions and belongings both in the real world and in online gaming communities while in health and strength do make this my will.
After the payment of my credit card debts, store cards and porn subscriptions, I hereby bequeath my slashdot username to be auctioned on E-bay and the proceeds donated to the open source community.
And how long before people start forging a mail's "From:" header to look like it came from this site? Way to make someone's loved ones panic/celebrate unnecessarily.
From: the-late-gudlyf@mylastemail.com
To: <Undisclosed-Recipients>
Subject: Sorry, I died...
Unfortunately, the reports of my death are not exaggerated. ...
Trolls lurk everywhere. Mod them down.