I was sitting here checking my website stats on a various toy sites that I maintain (Sitemeter is a wonderful thing) and nearly choked on my Diet Dr. Pepper when I saw the domain of one of the visitors to my journal this morning.

It originated from the university I went to.

What's more, they seemed really interested in my journal, too; they read quite a few pages. Now I wish I had even more detailed statistics, sort of like I wish I had when I get a visitor from ISPs of people I know I don't really want finding my journal, or at least, not right now.

Why do I get paranoid? I mean, I haven't even taken anything at the university in... wow. That many years? So it's not anybody who knows me, surely (a whole class has entered and almost left, let's put it that way). Plus, it was a around 2:15 AM, so it's certainly not any faculty that would remember me. I'm sure if I did an nslookup on them, it's just a PPP connection of a student.

It was just a funny coincidence, I guess. But that's all Mr. Paranoia needs to get started thinking that something is going on.

Something vaguely disturbing I got in email:

Date sent: From:

Mon, 06 Dec 1999 15:47:36 -0500

Dear Santa Claus,

I would you like to come and have my little nephew and niece, I will show my family when you come in, I will let you know that I like the santa Claus for Christmas Eve and maybe you should have some cookies for you because you are special to me um You need to write a letter and you will send me in mail

Dec 24 you will come at 7:30 to 8:00 P.M. to My parents house you will know where they live.

----------------------------------------------
my address

I like You and Mrs Santa Claus maybe you and Mrs Claus take picture with me.

I am your friend for long time.

Thank you,

Obviously this is some sort of joke. Right? And surely she doesn't want me to have her little nephew and niece in any potential connotation of the phrase. If she does, she needs to be locked up.

Surely somebody is parodying my parody with the broken english and all that, and the name on it was very foreign, in which case, more power to you, but...

This is why I only register things online with my PO Box, and I'm glad in Texas it's okay to shoot trespassers under most circumstances (although it doesn't stop the inevitable nuisance lawsuit).

Usually, I just glance quickly at mail from diary-l and leave it at that. Mostly I find that diary-l is good to pick up a few links, occasionally answer a question for somebody directly via email (woe to the fool who accidentally answers email directly to the group, because there's always somebody there who will bitch about anything you have to say), and to take up lots of disk space with drivel until you can weed through it. Basically, I don't spend as much time with 100 messages from there as I do with two or three from more technically-oriented lists. However, a brief thread of discussion about informing people online about one's demise and what to do about one's personal online presence piqued my interest.

In my case, a fair number of the people in my online life know enough about me that they can contact my family if need be, or know somebody else I know who can do the same. (I always say I'm going to remain 100% anonymous with most everyone, and then I never follow through for whatever reason.) However, I still have a few people I would want informed if I left this mortal coil, and I don't really think anybody in my family is experienced enough to take care of it themselves, and while my online presence isn't exactly outstanding right now, I've been planning to work on that, so I need to figure out if I want it to continue after I pass.

One of the list's members wondered why there wasn't some sort of service that could handle things like this after someone's death, and of course, I wondered, "yeah, why isn't there?"

I could see it - VirtualExecutor.com. You could contract with us to perform a number of services, and upon registration and payment of fees, you'd get a form to place with or refer to in one's will to fax or mail to VirtualExecutor.com with a death certificate to prove the registrant's passing. Then, whatever services were registered for would be performed.

We'd offer a number of services:

• You escrow your usernames, passwords, contacts online, newsgroups, mailing lists, websites, etc., with our secure server. You can update as often as you wish with your browser, along with instructions for each, selectable via a pulldown menu. You can put in different messages to send to each person, HTML files to be inserted on your website and linked according to one's directions, etc.

• Broker sale of an online commercial presence to outside entities.

• Web designers could build a whole online memorial for a given person, including webhosting, links to every mention of them online, audio or video streaming of the services or old home movies or whatever.

• Output and organize hardcopies of one's online presence for technologically-challenged family members to understand just what you did online, and how it affected you.

Of course, there has to be some sort of funds investment and escrow to ensure the perpetuation of the company so that the company would actually be around to perform the services that have been contracted for (this assumes a one-time payment up front, and not a recurring charge per annum), not to mention a way of protecting all those usernames and passwords.

I don't think this logo would be good for business.

The sad part about this is that nobody would actually use it. The people who are probably interested enough in such a service would just leave their own instructions and reference it in a will, or tell some friends about it. This is something that would simply never occur to most people.

This is nearly as crazy as my commercial .mp3 encoding business idea, but at least I think it had a chance of making some money. [grin] Crafty keeps telling me that I need to find some online service to offer that I can make money, though, so...

restlessmind