Deaths of gamers leave their online lives in limbo

NEW YORK (AP) — When Jerald Spangenberg collapsed and died in the middle of a quest in an
online game, his daughter embarked on a quest of her own: to let her father's gaming friends
know that he hadn't just decided to desert them.

With online social networks becoming ever more important in our lives, they're also becoming
an important element in our deaths. Spangenberg, who died suddenly from an abdominal
aneurysm at 57, was unprepared, but others are leaving detailed instructions. There's even a
tiny industry that has sprung up to help people wrap up their online contacts after their
deaths.

David Eagleman, a neuroscientist at the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, has had
plenty of time to think about the issue.

"I work in the world's largest medical center, and what you see here every day is people
showing up in ambulances who didn't expect that just five minutes earlier," he said. "If you
suddenly die or go into a coma, there can be a lot of things that are only in your head in
terms of where things are stored, where your passwords are."

He set up a site called Deathswitch, where people can set up e-mails that will be sent out
automatically if they don't check in at intervals they specify, like once a week. For $20
per year, members can create up to 30 e-mails with attachments like video files.

It's not really a profit-making venture, and Eagleman isn't sure about how many members it
has — "probably close to a thousand." Nor does he know what's in the e-mails that have been
created. Until they're sent out, they're encrypted so that only their creators can read
them.

If Deathswitch sounds morbid, there's an alternative site: Slightly Morbid. It also sends e
-mail when a member dies, but doesn't rely on them logging in periodically while they're
alive. Instead, members have to give trusted friends or family the information needed to log
in to the site and start the notification process if something should happen.

The site was created by Mike and Pamela Potter in Colorado Springs, Colo. They also run a
business that makes software for online games. Pamela said they realized the need for a
service like this when one of their online friends, who had volunteered a lot of time
helping their customers on a Web message board, suddenly disappeared.

He wasn't dead: Three months later, he came back from his summer vacation, which he'd spent
without Internet access. By then, the Potters had already had Slightlymorbid.com up and
running for two weeks.