IN A bid to keep a dead friend's character alive in the friend's memory on online game World Of Warcraft,
Singaporean IanWong spent an hour on the phone calling the United States in January.
He was trying to convince the game company to give him ownership of the account.
But his attempt failed as he did not have access to his friend's e-mail account, which the company required.
As more people like Mr Wong face similar dilemmas in this Internet age, a tiny online industry has sprung up to help people wrap up their online existence after their deaths.
One such site is Slightly Morbid (www.slightlymorbid.com), which is complete with a banner featuring the Grim Reaper. It allows members to send online friends e-mail messages written in advance if they die suddenly.
But how do these sites know when members have logged off for good in real life?
Slightly Morbid and another website, Legacy Locker (www.legacylocker.com), require a death certificate or a third party with the user's log-in information to start the notification process.
Another site, Deathswitch (www.deathswitch.com), automatically sends out an e-mail message if users fail to check in within specified periods.
According to these sites, their services can also be used to give loved ones passwords to e-mail and other online accounts, send videos, pass on 'unspeakable secrets' and even have the last word in an argument.
Legacy Locker founder Jeremy Toeman told my paper that the inspiration behind the site came when he realised thatwhile his physical assets were protected in his will, he had nothing in place to manage his virtual accounts.
Said Mr Toeman: "My computer password, my e-mail accounts, my social-networking contacts - if anything happened to me, virtually all of these would become literally inaccessible to my wife or others."
Prices for the service range from a one-off fee of US$10 (S$15) to US$30 per year.
Most Singaporeans my paper spoke to were unaware of these sites, but some said they would consider using them.
Said Mr Wong, a 31-year-old youth worker whose friend died of leukaemia: "Much of our lives now are online and when we die we leave things unresolved."
But not all agree.
Said marketing executive Andrew Kwa, 25: "If my online friends don't know I'm dead, we're probably not very close. And I'd probably leave important passwords in my will - it's safer."
