You log on, planning to start the morning with a quick check of your e-mail.
A message pops up from Uncle Ernie. The same Uncle Ernie who died a month ago.
Your computer may be even slower than you thought. Or perhaps it’s proof of an afterlife — with computer access and an e-mail account, no less.
Actually, Uncle Ernie had the foresight to subscribe to Timelessmail.com, an Ohio company that will send out e-mails for customers after they’ve been permanently deleted from among the living. Electronic last words, as it were.
For an annual fee ranging from $12 to $24, depending on the level of service, people can create up to 60 individual e-mails that can each go to as many as 25 recipients upon the client’s death. The e-mails are filed away, waiting for the client to be called to the great beyond. The account stays alive as long as the client does (and as long the subscription is kept up); once the client passes on, the messages are sent and the account is closed. The messages can be updated by the client at any time and can include a photo or a video file of up to 15 minutes.
Timelessmail.com’s message seems to have struck a chord — its Web site (www.timelessmail.com) had 102,714 hits in January alone (the latest data available). But it hasn’t translated into a huge number of subscribers — there have been about only three dozen signups. Company officials suspect that’s because customers are reluctant to provide their Social Security numbers, on which the service hinges.
One of the clients, a mother of three from Canton, Ohio, who asked that her name not be used, says she recently had some health problems that got her to thinking, what would happen if she were to die. She heard about the service and liked the idea, which she says fits her style of communication.
“I do a lot of e-mailing,” she says. “I’m not a strong speaker, and I’m not a person to speak on the phone. I’d rather type things out and look at it before I send it.”
Another customer said she was prompted to sign up by the combination of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and the holidays.
“Especially after what happened in New York,” says the woman, from Steubenville, Ohio, who also asked not to be identified. “I have three little children. Friends say, [what happened in New York] couldn’t happen to you; you’re a stay-at-home mom. But you never know. No one knows.
“I signed up right after Christmas. . . . I think, after the holidays and being around family, you realize how important that is. It doesn’t matter what you have — a big house, a car, whatever — your family is what means the most. And if anything ever happened, you’d want your family to know you were thinking about them.”
She has composed an e-mail for her husband and children, and is working on messages to her parents, siblings and friends from high school and college.
“It’s not so much about me, that I want to get my message across,” she says. “But it’s something to comfort those who would be left behind.”
The service was started in November by Robert Walker, who first envisioned the idea of sending such messages about three years ago, after the death of his father.
“My brother and sister and I were sitting around talking, and I told them that if I were to `invent’ death, you’d be able to check in with people once a year. Make sure they’re OK, let them know you’re OK,” he says. “And we talked about leaving messages for people.”
Defining moment
Nothing came of the idea until last spring, when Walker’s boss at Walsh University in North Canton, Ohio, died unexpectedly.
“It was just the concept of having someone disappear so suddenly. I decided I had to do something with this idea. Even if it was just for my friends, my family and me.”
He left his job as director of information systems at Walsh in mid-September and spent the next two months getting Timelessmail.com set up. He launched the service in November.
“I didn’t expect the [reaction] to hit as fast as it did,” says Geoff Karcher, head of the Karcher Group, Walker’s Internet service provider. “I mean, his traffic skyrocketed from the day they launched the thing. He got huge traffic.”
People’s messages can include anything, from a touching farewell sent to a loved one or words of advice for one’s children, to something a little less serious (“I left $100,000 in small bills hidden in . . . AARRRRRGGGHHHH!!!!) or even vengeful (the opportunity to moon the boss from the great beyond).
“In all my advertising, I said we are trying to bring out the best in humanity,” Walker says. “But obviously, people can put down whatever they want.”
Walker knows the content of only one customer’s e-mails — his own. Everything else is strictly between the sender and recipients.
“We don’t read them at all; I haven’t set up a way to read them and I don’t plan to,” he says.
“Everything remains confidential.”
The trigger mechanism that gets the e-mails sent is a person’s Social Security number. Timelessmail.com has hired a company that each month purchases from the Social Security Administration a list of people who’ve died. The list is compared to Timelessmail’s clients, and if there’s a match, Walker will recheck — thus far, none of his customers has had his number come up — before hitting the send button.
Walker has contacted the Social Security Administration to see if it would give would-be customers some sort of reassurance that their number is safe, and he’s considering partnering with a large financial institution that would lend its name to the operation.
Seeking assistance
“It’s secured, it’s guaranteed to be secured and confidential, but people still write and say they’re uncomfortable using this,” he says.
Even so, he’s not panicking.
“Initially I expected this to take 5 to 10 years to catch on. It’s just too new,” he says.
“I’m not expecting a million subscribers any time soon.”
“At first,” Karcher says, “I thought it was interesting but I didn’t really see the value. But as you think about it and as the idea sinks in and the usefulness sinks in, it makes a lot of sense.
“It’s somewhat morbid, but on the other hand it’s very practical. It’s reality. Death is reality and this gives you a good way to deal with it.”
